The ethnology of the British islands

THE

ETHNOLOGY

OF

THE BRITISH ISLANDS.

THE

ETHNOLOGY

THE BRITISH ISLANDS.

BY

R G. LATHAM, M.D., F.R.S.,

CORRESPONDING MEMBER TO THE ETHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY, NEW YORK,
ETC.

LONDON :
JOHN VAN VOORST, PATERNOSTER ROW.

MDCCCLII.

LONDON :
Printed by T. E. Metcalf, 63, Sxow Hill.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

Preliminary Remarks. — Present Populations of the Bri-
tish Isles. — Romans, &c. — Pre-historic Period. — The Irish
Elk. — How far Contemporaneous with Man. — Stone Period.
— Modes of Sepulture. — The Physical Condition of the Soil
— Its Fauna. — Skulls of the Stone Period. — The Bronze
Period. — Gold Ornaments. — Alloys and Castings. —How far
Native or Foreign. — Effect of the Introduction of Metals. —
Dwellings

CHAPTER II.

Authorities for the Earliest Historical Period.' — Herodo-
tus.— Aristotle. — Polybius. — Onomacritus. — Diodorus Si-
culus. — Strabo. — Festus Avienus. — Ultimate sources. —
Damnonii.— Phoenician Trade. — The Orgies. — South-East-
ern Britons of Caesar. — The Details of his Attacks. — The
Caledonians of Galgacus 38

CHAPTER III.

Origin of the Britons. — Kelts of Gaul. — The Belgse. —
Whether Keltic or German. — Evidence of Csesar. — Attre-
bates, Belgse, Remi, Durotriges and Morini, Chauci and
Menapii 58

VI CONTENTS.

CHAPTER IV.

PAGE

The Picts.— List of Kings.— Penn Fahel- Aber and
Inver. — The Picts probably, but not certainly, Britons. . 76

CHAPTER V.

Origin of the Gaels. — Difficulties of its Investigation. —
Not Elucidated by any Records, nor yet by Traditions.-
Ai-guments from the Difference between the British and
Gaelic Languages. — The British Language spoken in Gaul.
— The Gaelic not known to be spoken in any part of the
Continent. — Lhuyd's Doctrine. — The Hibernian Hypothe-
sis.— The Caledonian Hypothesis. — Postulates. ... 83

CHAPTER VI.

Roman Influences. — Agricola. — The Walls and Ramparts
of Adrian, Antoninus, and Severus. — Bonosus. — Carausius.
— The Constantian Family. — Franks and Alemanni in Bri-
tain.— Foreign Elements in the Roman Legions. . . 90

CHAPTER VII.

Value of the Early British Records. — True and Genuine
Traditions Rare. — Gil das. — Beda. — Nennius. — Annales
Cambrenses. — Difference between Chronicles and Registers.
— Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. — Irish Annals. — Value of the
Accounts of the Fifth and Sixth Centuries. — Questions to
which they apply 104

CHAPTER VIII.

The Angles of Germany : their comparative obscurity. —

CONTENTS. Vll

PAGE

Notice of Tacitus. — Extract from Ptolemy. — Conditions
of the Angle Area. — The Varini. — The Reudigni and other
Populations of Tacitus. — The Sabalingii, &c., of Ptolemy.
— The Suevi Angili. — Engle and Ongle. — Original Angle
Area 112

CHAPTER IX.

The Saxons — of Upper Saxony — of Lower, or Old Saxony.
— Nordalbingians. — Saxons of Ptolemy. — Present and An-
cient Populations of Sleswick-Holstein. — North -Frisians.
— Probable Origin of the name Saxon. — The Littus Saxoni-
cum. — Saxones Bajocassini. 165

CHAPTER X.

The Angles of Germany — Imperfect Reconstruction of
their History— Their Heroic Age. — Beowulf. — Conquest of
Anglen. — Anecdote from Procopius. — Their Reduction
under the Carlovingian Dynasty. — The Angles of Thurin-
gia . . .200

CHAPTER XL

Recapitulations and Illustrations. — Propositions respect-
ing the Keltic Character of the Original Occupants of
Britain, &c. — The Relations between the Ancient Britons
and the Ancient Gauls, &c. — The Scotch Gaels. — The Picts.
— The Date of the Germanic Invasions. — The names Angle
and Saxon. 219

CHAPTER XII.

Analysis of the Germanic Populations of England. — The
Jute Element Questionable. — Frisian Elements Probable.
— Other German Elements, how far Probable. — Forms in
-ing 232

Vlll CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XIII.

PAGE

The Scandinavians. — Forms in -by : their Import and
Distribution. — Danes of Lincolnshire, &c. ; of East Anglia ;
of Scotland ; of the Isle of Man ; of Lancashire and Che-
shire ; of Pembrokeshire. — Norwegians of Northumber-
land, Scotland, and Ireland, and Isle of Man. — Frisian
forms in Yorkshire. — Bogy. — Old Scratch. — The Picts
possibly Scandinavian. — The Normans 241

ETHNOLOGY

OF

THE BRITISH ISLANDS.

CHAPTER I.

PRELIMINARY REMARKS. — PRESENT POPULATIONS OF THE BRITISH

ISLES. — ROMANS, ETC. — PRE-HISTORIC PERIOD. THE IRISH ELK. —

HOW FAR CONTEMPORANEOUS WITH MAN. — STONE PERIOD.

MODES OF SEPULTURE. — THE PHYSICAL CONDITION OF THE SOIL

ITS FAUNA. SKULLS OF THE STONE PERIOD. — THE BRONZE

PERIOD. GOLD ORNAMENTS. ALLOYS AND CASTINGS — HOW

FAR NATIVE OR FOREIGN. — EFFECT OF THE INTRODUCTION OF
METALS. — DWELLINGS.

The ethnologist, who passes from the history
of the varieties of the human species of the world
at large, to the details of some special family,
tribe, or nation, is in the position of the naturalist
who rises from such a work as the Systema Na-
turae, or the Begne Animal, to concentrate his
attention on some special section or subsection
of the sciences of Zoology and Botany. If having
done this he should betake himself to some pon-
derous folio, bulkier than the one which he read
last, but devoted to a subject so specific and

2 MINUTE CHARACTER

limited as to have scarcely found a place in the
general history of organized beings, the compa-
rison is all the closer. The subject, in its main
characteristics, is the same in both cases ; but
the difference of the details is considerable. A
topographical map on the scale of a chart of
the world, a manipulation for the microscope as
compared with the preparation of a wax model,
are but types and illustrations of the contrast.
A small field requires working after a fashion
impossible for a wide farm ; often with differ-
ent implements, and often with different ob-
jects. A dissertation upon the Negroes of Africa,
and a dissertation upon the Britons of the Welsh
Principality, though both ethnological, have but
few questions in common, at least in the present
state of our knowledge ; and out of a hundred
pages devoted to each, scarcely ten would embody
the same sort of facts. With the Negro, we should
search amongst old travellers and modern mis-
sionaries for such exact statements as we might
be fortunate enough to find respecting his geogra-
phical position, the texture of his hair, the shade
of his skin, the peculiarities of his creed, the struc-
ture of his language ; and well satisfied should we
be if anything at once new and true fell in our
way. But in the case of the Briton all this is
already known to the inquirer, and can be con-
veyed in a few sentences to the reader. What

OF THE ETHNOLOGY OF BKITAIN. 3

then remains? A fresh series of researches, which
our very superiority of knowledge has developed ;
inquiries which, with an imperfectly known popu-
lation, would be impossible. Who speculates to
any extent upon such questions as the degrees of
intermixture between the Moors and the true
Negroes of Nubia? Who grapples with such a
problem as the date of the occupation of New
Guinea? Such and such-like points are avoided;
simply because the data for working them are
wanting. Yet with an area like the British Isles,
they are both possible and pertinent. More than
this. In such countries there must either be no
ethnology at all, or it must be of the minute kind,
since the primary and fundamental questions,
which constitute nine-tenths of our inquiries else-
where, are already answered.

Minute ethnology must be more or less specu-
lative— the less the better. It must be so, how-
ever, to some extent, because it attempts new
problems. Critical too it must be — the more the
better. It often works with unfamiliar instru-
ments, whose manipulation must be explained,
and whose power tested. Again, although the
field in which it works be wide, the tract in which
it moves may be beaten. An outlying question
may have been treated by many investigators,
and the results may be extremely different. In
British ethnology, the history of opinions only, if

4 MINUTE CHARACTER

given with the due amount of criticism, would fill
more than one volume larger than the present.

The above has been written to shew that any
work upon such a subject as the present must par-
take, to a great degree, of the nature of a disquisi-
tion: perhaps indeed, the term controversy would
not be too strong. The undeniable and recog-
nized results of previous investigators are truisms.
That the Britons and Gaels are Kelts, and that
the English are Germans is known wherever
Welsh dissent, Irish poverty, or English misgo-
vernment are the subjects of notice. What such
Kelticism or Germanism may have to do with
these same characteristics is neither so well ascer-
tained, nor yet so easy to discover. On the con-
trary, there is much upon these points which may
be well tm-learnt. Kelts, perchance, may not be
so very Keltic, or Germans so very German as is
believed ; for it may be that a very slight prepon-
derance of the Keltic elements over the German,
or of the German over the Keltic may have de-
termined the use of the terms. Such a point as
this is surely worth raising; yet it cannot be
answered off-hand. At present, however, it is
mentioned as a sample of minute ethnology, and
as a warning of the disquisitional character which
the forthcoming pages, in strict pursuance to the
nature of the subject, must be expected to ex-
hibit.

OF THE ETHNOLOGY OF BEITAIN. £>

The extent, then, to which the two stocks that
occupy the British Isles are pure or mixed ; the
characteristics of each stock in its purest form;
and the effects of intermixture where it has taken
place, are some of our problems ; and if they could
each and all be satisfactorily answered, we should
have a Natural History of our Civilization. But
the answers are not satisfactory ; at any rate they
are not conclusive. Nevertheless, a partial solu-
tion can be obtained ; a partial solution which is
certainly worth some efforts on the part of both
the reader and the writer. Other questions, too,
curious rather than of practical value, constitute
the department of minute ethnology; especially
when the area under notice is an island. The
date of its occupancy, although impossible as an
absolute epoch, can still be brought within cer-
tain limits. Whether, however, such limits would
not be too wide for any one but a geologist, is
another question.

Now, if I have succeeded in shewing that cri-
ticism and disquisition must necessarily form a
large part of such an ethnology as the one before
us, I have given a reason for what may, perhaps,
seem an apparent irregularity in the arrangement
of the different parts of the subject. With the
civil historian, the earliest events come first ; for,
in following causes to their consequences, he be-
gins with the oldest. The ethnologist, on the

6 PROBLEMS.

other hand, whenever — as is rarely the case — he
can lay before the reader the whole process and
all the steps of his investigations, reverses this
method, and begins with the times in which he
lives ; so that by a long series of inferences from
effect to cause, he concludes — so to say — at the
beginning; inasmuch as it is his special business
to argue backwards or upwards. Yet the facts of
the present volume will follow neither of these
arrangements exactly ; though, of course, the order
of them will be, in the main, chronological. They
will be taken, in many cases, as they are wanted
for the purposes of the argument ; so that if a fact
of the tenth century be necessary for the full
understanding of one of the fifth, it will be taken
out of its due order. Occasional transpositions of
this kind are to be found in all works wherein
the investigation of doubtful points preponder-
ates over the illustration of admitted facts, or in
all works where discussion outweighs exposition.

The period when the British Isles were occu-
pied by Kelts only (or, at least, supposed to have
been so) will form the subject of the earlier
chapters. The facts will, of course, be given as I
have been able to find them ; but it may be not
unnecessary to state beforehand the nature of the
principal questions upon which they will bear.

The date of the first occupancy of the British
Isles by man is one of them. It can (as already

PROBLEMS. 7

stated) only be brought within certain wide — very-
wide — limits; and that hypothetically, or subject
to the accuracy of several preliminary facts.

The division of mankind to which the earliest
occupants belonged is the next ; and it is closely
connected with the first. If the Kelts were the
earliest occupants of Britain, we can tell within
a few thousand years when they arrived. But
what if there were an occupation of Britain ante-
rior to theirs?

The civilization of the earliest occupants is a
question inextricably interwoven with the other
two; since the rate at which it advanced — if it
advanced at all — must depend upon the duration
of the occupancy, and the extent to which it was
the occupancy of one, or more than one, section of
mankind. But foreign intercourse may have ac-
celerated this rate, or a foreign civilization may
have altogether replaced that of the indigence.
The evidence of this is a fourth question.

So interwoven with each other are all these
questions, that, although the facts of the first three
chapters will be arranged with the special view to
their elucidation, no statement of the results will
be given until the invasion of the Anglo-Saxons,
or the introduction of the great Germanic ele-
ments of the British nation, leads us from the
field of early Keltic to that of early Teutonic re-
search; and that will not be until the details of

8 THE KELTIC STOCK.

the Britons as opposed to the Gaels, of the Gaels
as opposed to the Britons, and of the Picts (as
far as they can be made out) have been dis-
posed of.

One of the populations of the British Isles, at
the present moment, speaks a language belong-
ing to the Keltic, the other one belonging to the
Teutonic class of tongues. However, it is by no
means certain that the blood, pedigree, race, de-
scent, or extraction coincides with the form of
speech: indeed it is certain that it does so but
partially. Though few individuals of Teutonic
extraction speak any of the Keltic dialects as
their mother-tongue, the converse is exceedingly
common; and numerous Kelts know no other
language but the English. Speech, then, is only
primd facie evidence of descent ; nevertheless, it
is the most convenient criterion we have.

The Keltic class falls into divisions and subdivi-
sions. The oldest and purest portion of the Gaelic
Kelts is to be found in Ireland, especially on
the western coast. Situated as Connaught is on
the Atlantic, it lies beyond the influx of any
new blood, except from the east and north;
yet from the east and north the introduction
of fresh populations has been but slight. Here,
then, we find the Irish Gael in his most typical
form.

Scotland, like Ireland, is Gaelic in respect to

THE KELTIC STOCK. 9

its Keltic population, but the stock is less pure.
However slight may be the admixture of English
blood in the Highlands and the Western Isles,
the infusion of Scandinavian is very considerable.
Caithness has numerous geographical terms whose
meaning is to be found in the Danish, Swedish,
Norwegian, and Icelandic. Sutherland shews its
political relations by its name. It is the Southern
Land; an impossible name if the county be con-
sidered English (for it lies in the very north of
the island), but a natural name if we refer it to
Norway, of which Sutherland was, at one time, a
southern dependency, or (if not a dependency),
a robbing-ground. Orkney and Shetland were
once as thoroughly Norse as the Feroe Isles or
Iceland.

The third variety of the present British popu-
lation is in the Isle of Man, where a language
sufficiently like the Gaelic of Ireland and Scot-
land to be placed in the same division, is still
spoken. Yet the blood is mixed. The Norsemen
preponderated in Man; and the constitution of the
island is in many parts Scandinavian, though the
language be Keltic.

In Wales the language and population are
still Keltic, though sufficiently different from the
Scotch, Irish, and Manx, to be considered as a
separate branch of that stock. It is conveniently
called British, Cambrian, and Cambro-Briton.

] 0 GERMANS.

It is quite unintelligible to any Gael. Neither
can any Gael, talking Gaelic, make himself un-
derstood by a Briton. On the other hand, how-
ever, a Scotch and an Irish Gael understand each
other ; whilst, with some effort, they understand a
Manxman, and vice versa. So that the number
of mutually unintelligible languages of the Keltic
stock is two ; in other words, the Keltic dialects
of the British Isles are referable to two branches
— the British for the Welsh, and the Gaelic for
the Scotch, Irish, and Manx. The other language
of the British Isles is the English, one upon
which it is unnecessary to enlarge ; but which
makes the third tongue in actual existence at the
present moment, if we count the Irish, Scotch,
and Manx as dialects' of the same language, and
the fifth if we separate them.

By raising the Lowland Scotch to the rank of
a separate language, we may increase our varie-
ties; but, as it is only a general view which we
are taking at present, it is as well not to multi-
ply distinctions. I believe that, notwithstanding
some strong assertions to the contrary, there are
no two dialects of the English tongue — whether
spoken east or west — in North Britain or to the
South of the Tweed — that are not mutually in-
telligible, when used as it is the usual practice
to use them. That strange sentences may be
made by picking out strange provincialisms, and

ETC. 3 1

stringing them together in a manner that never
occurs in common parlance, is likely enough ; but
that any two men speaking English shall be in
the same position to each other as an Englishman
is to a Dutchman or Dane, so that one shall not
know what the other says, is what I am wholly
unprepared to believe, both from what I have
observed in the practice of provincial speech, and
what I have read in the way of provincial glos-
saries.

The populations, however, just enumerated, re-
present but a fraction of our ethnological varie-
ties. They only give us those of the nineteenth
century. Other sections have become extinct, or,
if not, have lost their distinctive characteristics,
wliich is much the same as dying out altogether.
The ethnology of these populations is a matter of
history. Beginning with those that have most
recently been assimilated to the great body of
Englishmen, we have —

1. The Cornishmen of Cornwall. — They are Bri-
tons in blood, and until the seventeenth century,
were Britons in language also. When the Cornish
language ceased to be spoken it was still intelli-
gible to a Welshman ; yet in the reign of Henry
II., although intelligible, it was still different.
Giraldus Cambrensis especially states that the
" Cornubians and Armoricans used a language
almost identical; a language which the Welsh,

12 CUMBRIANS, PICTS, ETC.

from origin and intercourse, understood in many
things, and almost in all."

2. The Cumbrians, of Cumberland, retained the
British language till after the Conquest. This
was, probably, spoken as far north as the Clyde.
Earlier, however, than either of these were —

3. The Picts. — The Cumbrian and Cornish Bri-
tons were simply members of the same division
with the Welshmen, Welshmen, so to say, when
the Welsh area extended south of the Bristol
Channel and north of the Mersey. The Picts
were, probably, in a different category They
may indeed have been Gaels. They have formed
a separate substantive division of Kelts. They
may have been no Kelts at all, but Germans or
Scandinavians.

But populations neither Keltic nor Teutonic
have, at different times, settled in England; popu-
lations which (like several branches of the Keltic
stock) have either lost their distinctive character-
istics, or become mixed in blood, but which (un-
like such Kelts) were not indigenous to any of
the islands. Like the Germans or Teutons, on
the other hand, they were foreigners ; but, unlike
the Germans or Teutons, they have not preserved
their separate substantive character. Still, some
of their blood runs in both English and Keltic
veins; some of their language has mixed itself
with both tongues; and some of their customs

NORMAN-FKENCH. 13

have either corrupted or improved our national
character. Thus —

1. The battle of Hastings filled England with
Normans, French in language, French and Scan-
dinavian in blood, but (eventually) English in
the majority of their matrimonial alliances. And
before the Normans came —

2. The Danes — and before the Danes —

3. The Romans. — Such is the general view of
the chief populations, past and present, of Eng-
land; of which, however, the Keltic and the Angle
are the chief.

The English -and -Scotch, the Normans, the
Danes, and the Romans have all been introduced
upon the island within the Historical period —
some earlier than others, but all within the last
2,000 years, so that we have a fair amount of
information as to their history; not so much,
perhaps, as is generally believed, but still a fair
amount. We know within a few degrees of lati-
tude and longitude where they came from ; and
we know their ethnological relations to the occu-
pants of the parts around them.

With the Kelts this is not the case. Of Gael
or Manxman, Briton or Pict, we know next to
nothing during their early history. We can guess
where they came from, and we can infer their
ethnological relations; but history, in the strict
sense of the term, we have none; for the Keltic

14 PRE-HISTORIC PERIOD.

period differs from that of all the others in being
pre-historic. This is but another way of saying
that the Keltic populations, and those only, are
the aborigines of the island ; or, if not aboriginal,
the earliest known. Yet it is possible that these
same Keltic populations, whose numerous tribes
and clans and nations covered both the British
and the Hibernian Isles for generations and gene-
rations before the discovery of the art of writing,
or the existence of a historical record, may be as
well understood as their invaders; since ethno-
logy infers where history is silent, and history,
even when speaking, may be indistinct. At any
rate, the previous notice of the ethnology of the
British Isles during the Historical period, prepares
us with a little light for the dark walk in the
field of its earliest antiquity.

Nothing, as has just been stated, in the earliest
historical records of Britain, throws any light
upon the original occupation of the British Islands
by man; indeed, nothing tells us that Britain,
when so occupied, was an island at all. The
Straits of Dover may have existed when the first
human being set foot upon what is now the soil
of Kent, or an isthmus may have existed instead.
Whether then it was by land, or whether it was
by water, that the population of Europe propa-
gated itself into England, is far beyond the evi-
dence of any historical memorial — far beyond the

PRE-HISTORIC PERIOD. 15

evidence of tradition. Nothing at present indi-
cates the nature of the primary migration of our
earliest ancestors. Neither does any historical re-
cord tell us what manner of men first established
themselves along the valleys of the Thames and
Trent, or cleared the forests along their water-
sheds. They may have been as much ruder than
the rudest of the tribes seen by Paulinus and
Agricola, as those tribes were ruder than our-
selves. They may, on the other hand, have en-
joyed a higher civilization, a civilization which
Caesar saw in its later stages only; one which
Gallic wars, and other evil influences, may have
impaired.

For the consideration of such questions as these
it matters but little whether we begin with the
information which the ambition of Caesar gave
the Romans the opportunity of acquiring, or such
accounts of the Phoenician traders as found their
way into the writings of the Greeks; Polybius
(for instance), Aristotle, or Herodotus. A few
centuries, more or less, are of trifling importance.
The social condition in both cases is the same.
There was tin in Cornwall, and iron swords in
Kent ; in other words, there was the civilization
of men who knew the use of metals, both on the
side of the soldiers who followed Cassibelaunus
to fight against Caesar, and amongst the miners
and traders of the Land's-end. In both cases,

16 PRE-HISTORIC PERIOD.

too, there was foreign intercourse; with Gaul,
where there was a tincture of Roman, and with
Spain, where there was a tincture of Phoenician,
civilization. This is not the infancy of our spe-
cies, nor yet that of any of its divisions. For this
we must go backwards, and farther back still,
from the domain of testimony to that of infer-
ence, admitting a pre-historic period, with its
own proper and peculiar methods of investigation
— methods that the ethnologist shares with the
geologist and naturalist, rather than with the
civil historian. In respect to their results, they
may be barren or they may be fertile; but,
whether barren or whether fertile, the practice
and application of them is a healthy intellectual
exercise.

It must not be thought that the use of metals,
and the contact with the Continent, which have
just been noticed, invalidate the statement as to
the insufficiency of our earliest historical notices.
It must not be thought that they tell us more than
they really do. It is only at the first view that
the knowledge of certain metallurgic processes,
and the trade and power that such knowledge
developes, are presumptions in favour of a cer-
tain degree of antiquity in the occupancy of our
island on the parts of its islanders; and it is only
by forgetting the insular character of Great Bri-
tain that we can allow ourselves to suppose that,

PEE-HISTORIC PERIOD. 17

though our early arts tell us nothing about our
first introduction, they at any rate prove that it
was no recent event " Time," we may fairly say,
" must be allowed for such habits as are implied
by the use of metals to have developed them-
selves, and, consequently, generations, centuries,
and possibly even milleniums must have elapsed
between the landing of the first vessel of the first
Britons, and the beginning of the trade with the
Kassiterides." As a general rule, such reasoning
is valid; yet the earliest known phenomena of
British civilization are compatible with a compa-
ratively modern introduction of its population.
For Great Britain may have been peopled like
Iceland or Madeira, i. e., not a generation or two
after the peopling of the nearest parts of the op-
posite Continent, but many ages later; in which
case both the population and its civilization may
be but things of yesterday. In the twelfth cen-
tury, Iceland had an alphabet and the art of writ-
ing. Had these grown up within the island itself,
the inference would be that its population was of
great antiquity; since time must be allowed for
their evolution — even as time must be allowed
for the growth of acorns on an oak. But the art
may be newer than the population, or the popu-
lation and the art may be alike recent. Hence,
as the civilization of the earliest Britons may be
newer than the stock to which it belonged, the

IS PRE-HISTORIC PERIOD.

imony of ancient writers to its existence is
anything but conclusive against the late origin of
the —If It > admit an absolutely

>ric period, and that without reservation ;
and as a corollary, to allow that it may have dif-
fered in kind as well s degi ee from the historic.

There is another fact that should be nc
The languages of Great Britain are reducible
two divisions, both of which agree in mai-
tial points with certain languages or dialects of

.tinental Europe. The Brit>
the Gaelic more distantly, allied to the ancient
tongue of the Gauls. From this affinity we get
an argumen: <t any extreme antiquity of

the Britons of the British Isles. The date of their
separation from the tribes of the Continent v
not so remote as to obliterate and annihilate all
traces of the original mother-tongue. It was not
long enough for the usual pr- which lan-

guages are changed, to eject from even the Irish
the most unlike of the t y word

and inflection which the progenitors of the pre-

t Irish brought from Gaul, and to replace them
by others. So that, at the first view, we have
a limit in this direction ; yet unless we have
ird certain preliminaries, the limit is unreaL
All that it _ he comparatively recent

introduction of the Keltic stock V - of

the human species, other than Keltic, may have

PRE-HISTORIC PERIOD. 19

existed at an indefinitely early period, and subse-
quently have been superseded by the Kelts. Phi-
lology, then, tells us little more than history ;
and it may not be superfluous to add, that the
occupancy of Great Britain by a stock of the kind
in question, earlier than the Keltic, and different
from it, is no imaginary case of the author's, but
a doctrine which has taken the definite form of a
recognized hypothesis, and characterizes one of
the best ethnological schools of the Continent —
the Scandinavian.

For the ambitious attempt at a reconstruction
of the earliest state of the human kind in Britain,
we may prepare ourselves by a double series of
processes. Having taken society as it exists at
the present moment, we eject those elements of
civilization which have brought it to its pre-
sent condition, beginning with the latest first.
"We then take up a smaller question, and con-
sider what arts and what forms of knowledge —
what conditions of society — existing amongst the
earlier populations have been lost or superseded
with ourselves. The result is an approximation
to the state of things in the infancy of our spe-
cies. We subtract (for instance) from the sum of
our present means and appliances such elements
as the knowledge of the power of steam, the art
of printing, and gunpowder ; all which we can do
under the full light of history. Stripped of these,

20 PKE-HISTORIC PERIOD.

society takes a ruder shape. But it is still not
rude enough to be primitive. There are parts of
the earth's surface, at the present moment, where
the metals are unknown. There was, probably, a
time when they were known nowhere. Hence, the
influences of such a knowledge as this must be
subtracted. And then come weaving and pot-
tery, the ruder forms of domestic architecture, and
boat-building, lime-burning, dyeing, tanning, and
the fermentation of liquors. When and where
were such arts as these wanting to communities?
No man can answer this ; yet our methods of in-
vestigation require that the question should be
raised.

Other questions, too, which cannot be answered
must be suggested, since they serve to exhibit the
trains of reasoning that depend upon them. Was
Britain (a question already indicated) cut off
from Gaul by the Straits of Dover when it was
first peopled? If it were, the civilization required
for the building of a boat must have been one of
the attributes of the first aborigines; so that,
whatever else in the way of civilization may hav
been evolved on British ground, the art of hoi
lowing a tree, and launching it on the waves wa
foreign.

Now it is safe to say that the writers who are
most willing to assign a high antiquity to the
first occupation of the British Isles by Man, have

■

PRE-HISTORIC PERIOD. 21

never carried their epoch so high as the time
when Britain and Gaul were joined by an isthmus.
On the contrary, they all argue as if the islands
were as insular as they are at present, and attri-
bute to the first settlers the construction and
management of some frail craft — rude, of course,
but still a seaworthy piece of mechanism — after
the fashion of the boats of Gaul or Germany ; and
this is the reasonable view of the subject.

In Mr. Daniel Wilson's " Pre-historic Annals of
Scotland/' we have the best data for the next
portion of the question, viz., the extent to which
geological changes have occurred since the first
occupancy of our islands. In the valley of the
Forth,* alterations in the relations of the land
and sea to the amount of twenty-five feet have
occurred since the art of making deers' horns into
harpoons was known in Scotland. Such at least
is the inference from the discovery, in the Carse
lands about Blair Drummond Moss, of the ske-
leton of a whale, with a harpoon beside it, twenty-
five feet above the present tides of the Forth. As
much as can be told by any single fact is told by
this ; its valuation being wholly in the hands of
the geologists.

Then, the bone of an Irish elk, according to one
view (but not according to another), gives us a
second fact. A rib, with an oval opening, where

* See Wilson's " Pre-historic Annals of Scotland."

22 PRE-HISTOEIC PERIOD.

oval openings should not be, and with an irregu-
lar effusion of callus around it, is found under
eleven feet of peat. Dr. Hart attributes this to a
sharp-pointed instrument, wielded by a human
hand, which without penetrating deep enough to
cause death, effected a breach on the continuity
of the bone, and caused inflammation to be set
up. But Professor Owen thinks that a weapon
of the kind in question, if left in, to be worked
out by the vix medicatrix of Nature, would be
fatal, and consequently he prefers the notion of
the wound having been inflicted by a weapon
which was quickly withdrawn, e. g., the horn of
some combative rival of its own kind, rather than
the human. Now if it be a difficult matter to say
what will, and what will not kill a man in the
year '52, much more so is it to speak chirurgically
about Irish elks of the Pleiocene period. Hence
the evidence of man having been cotemporary
with the Megaceros Hibernicus is unsatisfactory.

That a certain amount, then, of change of level
between the land and sea, in a certain part of
Scotland, has taken place since Scotchmen first
hunted whales is the chief fact, relative to the
date of our introduction, that we get from geo-
logy. From archaeology we learn something
more. Those sepulchral monuments which have
the clearest and most satisfactory signs of anti-
quity, contain numerous implements of stone and

STONE AGE. 23

bone, but none of metal. When metal is found,
the concomitant characters of the tomb in which
it occurs, indicate a later period. If so, it is a
fair inference for the ethnological archaBologist
to conclude, that although the earliest colonists
reached Britain late enough to avail themselves
of boats, their migration was earlier than the dif-
fusion of the arts of metallurgy. And this has in-
duced the best investigators to designate the ear-
liest stage in British ethnology by the name of the
Stone Peeiod, a technical and convenient term.

It is the general opinion, that during this pe-
riod the practice of inhumation, or simple burial,
was commoner than that of cremation or burning,
though each method was adopted. Over the re-
mains disposed of by the former process, were
erected mounds of earth (tumuM or barrows), heaps
of stone (cairns), or cromlechs. There are strong
suspicions that the practice of Sutti was recog-
nized. Around a skeleton, more or less entire,
are often found, at regular distances, the ashes of
bodies that were burnt ; just as if the chief was
interred in the flesh, but his subordinates given
over to the flames. The posture is, frequently,
one which, on the other side of the Atlantic, has
called forth numerous remarks. Throughout Ame-
rica, it was observed by Dr. Morton, that one of
the most usual forms of burial was to place the
corpse in a half upright position, or a sitting atti-

24 STONE AGE,

tude, with the knees and hams bent, and the
arms folded on the legs. Now this is a common
posture in Britain — a clear proof of the extent to
which similar practices are independent of imita-
tion. If any ornaments be found with the corpse,
they are chiefly of cannel coal. The implements
are all of stone, or bone — the celt, the arrow, the
spear-head, the adze, and the mallet.

What was the physical aspect of the country at
this time? The present, minus the clearings —
wood and fen, fen and wood, in interminable suc-
cession ; woods of oak in the clay soils ; of beech
on the chalk ; of birch, pine, and fir in the north-
ern parts of the island. The boats were essen-
tially monoxyla, i. e., single trees hollowed out,
sometimes by stone adzes, oftener by fire. The
chief dresses were the skins of beasts.

Such is what archaeology tells us. The other
questions belong to the naturalist. What was the
ancient Fauna? Whether the earliest men were
cotemporaneous with the latest of the extinct
quadrupeds, has been already asked — the answer
being doubtful. How far the earliest beasts of
chase and domestication were the same as the pre-
sent, is a fresh question. The sheep may reasonably
be considered as a recent introduction; but with all
the other domestic animals there are, perhaps, as
good reasons for deriving them from native spe-
cies as for considering them to be of foreign origin.

STONE AGE. 25

The hog of the present breed, may indeed be of
continental origin ; so may the present cat, horse,
and ass. Nevertheless, the hog, cat, horse, and
ass, whose bones are found in the alluvial depo-
sits, may have been domesticated. The Devon-
shire, Hereford, and similar breeds of oxen may
be new; but the bos longifrons may have origi-
nated some native breeds, which the inhabitants
of even the earliest period — the period of stone
and bone implements — may have domesticated.
The opinion of Professor Owen is in favour of this
view; and certainly, though it cannot be enforced
by mere authority, it is recommended by its sim-
plicity,— avoiding, as it does, the unnecessary
multiplication of causes. The goat was certainly
indigenous, but no more certainly domesticated
than the equally indigenous deer. This indigenous
rein-deer may or may not have been trained. The
miserable aliments of the beach, shell-fish and Crus-
tacea, constituted no small part of the earliest
human food ; and so (for the northern part of the
isle at least) did eggs, seals, and whales. Surely
in these primitive portions of the Stone period our
habits must have approached those of the Lap,
the Samoeid, and the Eskimo, however different
they may be now.

But metals, in the course of time, were intro-
duced ; first bronze, and then iron ; gold and lead
being, perhaps, earlier than either, earlier too

26 STONE AGE.

than silver. Of gold we take but little notice.
It was not a useful metal; but subservient only
to the purposes of barbaric ornament. The next
fact is of great importance.

In those tombs where the implements are most
exclusively of stone, and where the other signs of
antiquity correspond, the skulls are of unusually
small capacity. In the next period they are
larger. There are also some notable points of
difference in the shape. Such at least is the
current opinion ; although the proofs that such
difference is not referable to difference of age or
sex, is by no means irrefragable. Still we may
take the fact as it is supposed and reported to be.

If we do this, we are prepared for another
question. How far is the introduction of metal
implements and of new arts, a sign of the intro-
duction of a fresh stock or variety of the human
species? How far, too, is the difference in the
capacity of the skulls? How far the fact of the
two changes coinciding? The answer has gene-
rally been in the affirmative. The men who used
implements of bronze were Kelts ; the men who
eked out their existence with nothing better than
adzes and arrow-heads of stone, were other than
Keltic. They were ante-Keltic aborigines, whom
a Keltic migration annihilated and superseded.
Such is the widely-spread doctrine. Yet it is
doubtful whether the premises bear out the in-

BRONZE AGE. 27

ference — far as it has been recognized. I doubt
it myself; because, admitting (for the sake of
argument) that there is a difference in the size
and the shape of the skulls, it by no means follows
that a difference of stock is the only way of ac-
counting for it. Improved implements, taken by
themselves, merely denote either a progress in the
useful arts, or, what is more likely, some new
commercial relations. The same improved imple-
ments, if considered as means to an end, denote
an improvement in the nutrition of the indivi-
duals who used them. The bones of a man who
hunts stags and oxen with bronze weapons will
carry more flesh, and consequently be more fuller
developed than those of a man who, for want of
better instruments than flint and bone arrow-
heads, feeds chiefly upon whale blubber and shell-
fish. Now, what applies to the bones in general,
applies — though perhaps in a less degree — to the
skull. In the difference, then, between the crania
of the Stone and Bronze periods I see no intro-
duction of a new variety of our species, but merely
the effects of a better diet, arising from an im-
provement in the instruments for obtaining it.
If the assumption, then, of a pre-Keltio stock be
gratuitous, the question as to the date of our
population is considerably narrowed. Its intro-
duction (as already indicated) must have been
sufficiently late to allow the original affinities be-

28 BRONZE AGE.

tween the Keltic dialects of the British Isles, and
the Keltic dialects of the European Continent, to
remain visible. But as many milleniums would
be required for the opposite effect of obliterating
the original similarity, this is saying but little.
All that it is safe to assert is —

1. That the primitive Britons occupied the
islands sufficiently early to allow of the relative
levels of the land and sea on the valley of the
Forth to alter to the amount of twenty-five feet
— there or thereabouts.

2. That they occupied it sufficiently late to
allow the common origin of the Gaelic and British
tongues to remain visible in the nineteenth century.

This latter position rests upon the supposition
that the early inhabitants in question were of the
same stock as the present Welsh and Gaels — the
contrary doctrine being held to be, not erroneous,
but gratuitous and unnecessary.

We are now prepared to find that in certain
monuments, less ancient than those of the Stone
period, the enclosed relics are of metal, and that
this metal is an alloy of copper and tin — bronze —
not brass, which is an alloy] of copper and zinc.
Not only are such relics more elaborate in respect
to their workmanship, but the kinds of them are
more varied. They are referable indeed to the
three classes of warlike instruments, industrial
implements, and personal ornaments, but the

BRONZE AGE. 29

varieties of each sort are comparatively numer-
ous. Swords and shields, which would be well-
nigh impossible accoutrements during the Stone
period, now come into use ; so do moulds for
casting, as well as bracelets and necklaces. In
short, the signs of a higher civilization and fresh
means for the conquest of either Man or Nature
appear.

The evidence that the Bronze period succeeded
the Stone, is on the whole satisfactory; indeed its
a priori likelihood is so great, as to make a little
go a long way. At the same time, it must not be
supposed that in each individual case the newest
monuments wherein we find bone and stone are
older than the oldest wherein we find bronze.
No line of demarcation thus trenchant can be
drawn ; and no proofs of absolute succession thus
conclusive can be discovered. Upon the whole,
however, there was a time when the early Britons
were in the position of the South Sea Islanders
when first discovered, i. e., ignorant of the use of
metals. As long as the arts of metallurgy are
unknown, the notice of the physical conditions of
the country is confined to its Flora, its Fauna,
and its stone quarries. What was there to culti-
vate? What was there to hunt or to domesti-
cate? What was there to build with? Now,
however, the questions change. What were the
mineral resources of the soil? It is not neces-

30 BRONZE AGE.

sary to enlarge on these. The use of coal as a
fuel is wholly recent. On the other hand, cer-
tain varieties of it were used as ornaments — the
cannel coal, and the bituminous shale of Dorset-
shire (Kimmeridge clay). So was jet.

The metal first worked was gold; and its use
dates as far back as the Stone period; indeed it
may belong to the very earliest age of our island ;
since the localities where it has been found in
Great Britain are by no means few ; and in early
times each was richer than at present. In Eng-
land, from Alston Moor; in Scotland, from the
head -waters of the Clyde; and in Ireland, from
the Avonmore, gold for the adornment of even
the hunters of the bone spear-head, and the woods-
men of the stone-hatchet might have been pro-
cured ; and the simple art of working it, although
it may possibly have been Gallic in origin, may
quite as easily have been native. The chief gold
ornaments, tores, armillse, and fibulas have been
found in association with bronze articles, but not
exclusively.

With those archaeologists and ethnologists who
believe that the introduction of bronze imple-
ments coincided with the advent of a new variety
of mankind, the question whether the art of alloy-
ing and casting metals was of native or foreign
origin, is a verbal one; since it was native or
foreign just as we define the term — native to the

BRONZE AGE. ol

stock which introduced it on the British soil,
foreign to the soil itself. But as soon as we de-
mur to the notion that the earliest Britons were
a separate and peculiar stock, and commit our-
selves to the belief that they were simply Kelts in
a ruder condition, the problem presents itself in a
different and more important form. Was the art
of making an alloy of tin and copper self-evolved,
or was it an art which foreign commerce intro-
duced? Was the art of casting such alloys British?
It is well to keep the two questions separate.
The preliminary facts in respect to the history
of the bronze metallurgy are as follows : —

1. The peculiar geographical distribution of tin,
which of all the metals of any wide practical uti-
lity is found in the fewest localities, those locali-
ties being far apart, e. g. Britain and Malacca —

2. The wide extent of country over which
bronze implements are found. Except in Nor-
way and Sweden, where the use of iron seems to
have immediately followed that of stone and bone,
they have been found all over Europe —

3. The narrow limits to the proportions of alloy
— nine-tenths copper, and one-tenth tin — there or
thereabouts — in the majority of cases.

4. The considerable amount of uniformity in
the shape of even those implements wherein a
considerable variety of form is admissible. Thus
the bronze sword — a point hereafter to be no-

32 BRONZE AGE.

ticed — is almost always long, leaf-shaped, point-
ed, and without a handle.

The last three of these facts suggest the notion
that bronze metallurgy originated with a single
population; the first, that that population was
British. Yet neither of these inferences is unim-
peachable.

The notion that the bronze implements them-
selves were made in any single country, and thence
diffused elsewhere, has but few upholders ; since,
in most of the countries where they have been
found, the moulds for making them have been
found also. Hence the doctrine that the raw
material — the mixed metal only — was brought
from some single source is the more important
one. Yet chemical investigations have modified
even this.* The proportions in question are the
best, and they are easily discovered to be so.
Seven parts copper to one of tin has been shewn
by experiment to be too brittle, and fifteen parts
copper to one of tin too soft, for use. Within
these proportions the chief analyses of the ancient
bronze implements range. The exact proportion
of ten copper to one of tin, Mr. Wilson has shewn
to be an overstatement. All then that we are
warranted to infer is, that Britain was the chief
source of the tin.

* This is well worked out by Mr. Wilson, in his " Pre-historic
Annals of Scotland."— Pp. 238 &c.

EARLY METALS. 33

This is a great fact in the annals of our early
commerce, but not necessarily of much import-
ance in the natural history of our inventions ; since
it by no means follows that because Cornwall
supplied tin to such adventurous merchants as
sought to buy it, it therefore discovered the art
of working it.

The chief reason for believing that the art of
working in any metal except gold was as foreign
to Britain as the alphabet was to Greece, rests on
a negative fact, of which too little notice has been
taken. Copper is a metal of which England pro-
duces plenty. It is a metal, too, which is the
easiest worked of all, except gold and lead. It is
the metal which savage nations, such as some of
the American Indians, work when they work no
other ; and, lastly, it is a metal of which, in its
unalloyed state, no relics have been found in
England. Stone and bone first ; then bronze or
copper and tin combined ; but no copper alone. I
cannot get over this hiatus — cannot imagine a
metallurgic industry beginning with the use of
alloys. Such a phenomenon is a plant without the
seed ; and, as such, indicates transplantation ra-
ther than growth.

This view assists us in our chronology. If the
art of working in bronze be a native and inde-
pendent development, its antiquity may be of any
amount — going back to 3000 B.C. as easily as to

34 EARLY METALS.

2000 B.C., and to 2000 B.c. as easily as to 1000 B.C.
It may be of any age whatever, provided only
that it be later than the Stone period. But if it
be an exotic art, it must be subsequent to the
rise of the Phoenician commerce. Such I believe
to have been the case. That the Britons were apt
learners, and that they soon made the art their
own, is likely. The existence of bronze and stone
moulds for adzes and celts proves this.

The effects of the introduction of metal imple-
ments would be two-fold. It would act on the
social state of the occupants of the British Isles,
and act on the physical condition of the soil. The
opportunities of getting stones and bones for the
purposes of warfare, would be pretty equally di
tributed over the islands, so that the means
attack and defence would be pretty equal through
out ; but the use of bronze would give a vast pre
ponderance of power to certain districts, Cornwall,
Wales, and the copper countries. The vast forests,
too, upon which stone hatchets would have but
little effect, would be more easily cleared, and
their denizens would be more successfully hunted.

Amber ornaments are found along with the
implements of bronze. Do these imply foreign
commerce — commerce with the tribes of Courland
and Prussia — the pre-eminent amber localities?
Not necessarily. Amber, in smaller quantities,
is found in Britain.

lie

EARLY METALS. 35

Glass beads, too, are found. This, I think, does
imply commerce. At any rate, I am slow to be-
lieve that the art of fusing glass was of indigenous
growth. The use of it was, most probably, a con-
comitant of the tin trade.

Undoubted specimens of weaving and un-
doubted specimens of pottery, occur during the
Bronze period. Lead, too, is found in some of the
bronze alloys ; the word itself being, apparently,
of Keltic origin. Whether the same could not be
referred to the Stone period is uncertain. It is
probable, however, that whilst the implements
were of stone and bone, the dress was of skin.

Nothing has yet been said about the dwellings
of the early islanders. This is because it is diffi-
cult to assign a date to their remains. They may
belong to the Bronze — they may belong to the
Stone period. They may be more recent than
either. At any rate, however, relics of ancient
domestic architecture exist. A foundation sunk in
the earth, with stone walls of loose masonry, and
covered, most probably, with reeds and branches,
suggests the idea of a subterranean granary, for
which the old houses of the earliest Britons have
been mistaken; but, nevertheless, it belonged to
a house. On the floor of this we find charred
bones, and enormous heaps of oyster and mussel
shells. Stone handmills, too, denote the use of
corn; though from the character of the ancient

36 EARLY METALS.

Flora, vegetable forms of food must have been
rarer than animal.

Iron was known in Caesar's time. How much
earlier is doubtful. So was silver. Both were of
later date than gold and bronze; and more than
this it is not safe to say. Of the great monolithic
buildings, it is reasonable to suppose that they are
later than the Stone, and earlier than the Histo-
rical, period. Druidism, however, in its germs
may be of any antiquity ; not, however, if we sup-
pose that the first introduction of bronze coincided
with the first introduction of the Kelts.

An Iron period succeeds the Bronze ; but it will
not be the subject of our immediate consideration,
inasmuch as it coincides pretty closely with the
historic epoch. The sequence, however, requires
further notice. That there should be a period
the history of mankind when the use of metal
and the arts of metallurgy were wholly unknot
and that during such a period, imperfect imple-
ments of bone and stone should minister to the
wants of an underfed and defenceless generation, is
not so much a particular fact in British ethnology
as a general doctrine founded upon our a priori
views, and applicable to the history of man at
large. For if each of the useful arts have its own
proper origin, referrible to some particular place,
time, and community, there must have been an
era when it was wanting to mankind. Hence,

lires
din
tals,
>wn,

EARLY METALS. 37

an ante-metallic age is as much the conception of
the speculator, as the discovery of the investigator.
The order in which the metals are discovered,
the leading problem in what may be called the
natural liistory of metallurgy, is far more depend-
ant upon induction. Induction, however, has given
the priority to copper, just as is expected from the
comparative reducibility of its ores — lead and
gold being put out of the question. So that it is
not so much the general fact of the order of suc-
cession in respect to the Stone, Copper, and Iron
periods that the laudable investigations of British
archaeologists have established as the nature of
the concomitant details, the modifications of the
periods themselves, and the exact character of
their sequence. Under each of these heads there
is much worth notice. The difference between
the shape and size of the skulls of the Stone and
Bronze periods has been broadly asserted — per-
haps it has been exaggerated, at any rate it has
formed the basis of an hypothesis. The substi-
tution of a Bronze for a Copper period in Britain
is an important modification, mainly attributable
to the existence of tin. The comparative com-
pleteness of the sequence is interesting. It by no
means follows that it should be regular. In Nor-
way there is no Bronze period at all; but Bone
and Stone in the first instance, and Iron immedi-
ately afterwards.

.38 NOTICES

CHAPTER II.

AUTHORITIES FOR THE EARLIEST HISTORICAL PERIOD. —HERODOTUS.
— ARISTOTLE. — POLYBIUS. — ONOMACRITUS. — DIODORUS SICULUS.
— STRABO. — PESTUS AVIENUS. — ULTIMATE SOURCES. — DAMNONII.

PHOENICIAN TRADE. — THE ORGIES. — SOUTH-EASTERN BRITONS

OF C^SAR. THE DETAILS OF HIS ATTACKS. — THE CALEDONIANS

OF GALGACUS.

The extant writers anterior to the time of
Julius Caesar, in whose works notice of the
British islands are to be found, are, at most, but
four in number. They are all, of course, Greek.

Herodotus is the earliest. He writes " of the
extremities of Europe towards the west, I cannot
speak with certainty .... nor am I acquainted
with the islands Cassiterides, from which tin
brought to us." * — iii. 115.

Aristotle is the second. "Beyond the Pillai
of Hercules/' he tells us, " the ocean flows rounc
the earth ; in this ocean, however, are two islam
and those very large, called Britannic, Albioi
and Ierne, which are larger than those befori
mentioned, and lie beyond the Celti; and othei
two not less than these, Taprobane, beyond the
Indians, lying obliquely in respect of the main
land, and that called Phebol, situate over against

* The translations of this and all the following Greek extracts
are from the " Man amenta Historica Britannica."

OF EARLY WRITERS. 39

the Arabic Gulf; moreover not a few small islands,
around the Britannic Isles and Iberia, encircle as
with a diadem this earth ; which we have already
said to be an island." — De Mundo, § 3.

Polybius comes next. " Perhaps, indeed, some
will inquire why, having made so long a discourse
concerning places in Libya and Iberia, .we have
not spoken more fully of the outlet at the Pillars
of Hercules, nor of the interior sea, and of the
peculiarities which occur therein, nor yet indeed
of the Britannic Isles, and the working of tin;
nor again, of the gold and silver mines of Iberia ;
concerning winch writers, controverting each
other, have discoursed very largely." — iii. 57.

Lastly come half-a-dozen lines of doubtful anti-
quity, which the editors of the " Monumenta Bri-
tannica" have excluded from their series of ex-
tracts, on the score of their being taken from a
non-existent or impossible author — a bard of no
less importance than Orpheus. The ship Argo is
supposed to speak, and say —

" For now by sad and painful trouble
Shall I be encompassed, if I go too near the Iernian Islands.
For unless, by bending within the holy headland,
I sail within the bays of the land, and the barren sea,
I shall go outward into the Atlantic Ocean."

An important sentence occurs a few lines lower.
The British Isles are spoken of —

" where (are) the wide houses

of Demeter."

40

NOTICES

This will be noticed in the sequel.

No reason for excluding these lines lies in the
fact of their being forgeries. Provided that they
were composed before the time of Csesar, the
authorship matters but little. If, as is the com-
mon practice, we attribute them to Onomacritus,
a cotemporary of Mardonius and Miltiades, they
are older than the notice of Herodotus.

It cannot be denied that these data for the times
anterior to Csesar are scanty. A little considera-
tion will shew that they can be augmented. Be-
tween the time of Julius Caesar and Claudius — a
period of nearly a hundred years — no new informa-
tion concerning Britain beyond that which was
given by Csesar himself, found its way to Rome ;
since neither Augustus nor Tiberius followed up
the aggressions of the Great Dictator. Conse-
quently, the notices in the "Bellum Gallicum" ex-
haust the subject as far as it was illustrated by any
Roman observers. Now if we find in any writer
of the time of Augustus or Tiberius, notices of our
island which can not be traced to Caesar, they
must be referred to other and earlier sources ; and
may be added to the list of the Greek authorities.

If we limit these overmuch, we confine our-
selves unnecessarily. Inquiry began as early as
the days of Herodotus ; and opportunities in-
creased as time advanced. The Baltic seems to
have been visited when Aristotle wrote ; and be-

OF EARLY WRITERS. 41

tween his era and that of Polybius the intellec-
tual activity of the Alexandrian Greeks had be-
gun to work upon many branches of science —
upon none more keenly than physical geography.

From the beginning of the Historical period, the
first-hand information — for it is almost super-
fluous to remark that none of the Greek authors
speak from personal observation — flows from
two sources ; from the inhabitants of western and
southern Gaul, and from the Phoenicians. The
text of Herodotus suggests this. In the passage
which has been quoted, he speaks of the Kassi-
terides; and Kassiterides is a term which a Phoe-
nician only would have used. No Gaul would
have understood the meaning of the word. It
was the Asiatic name for either tin itself, or for
some tin-like alloy; and the passage wherein it
occurs is one which follows a notice of Africa.

In two other passages, however, the considera-
tion of the populations and geography of Western
Europe is approached from another quarter. The
course of the Danube is under notice, and this is
what is said : —

" The river Ister, beginning with the Kelts,
and the city of Pyrene, flows so as to cut Europe in
half. But the Kelts are beyond the Pillars of
Hercules; and they join the Kynesii, who are the
furthest inhabitants of Europe towards the set-
ting-sun/'— ii. 33.

42 HERODOTUS.

" The Ister flows through the whole of Europe,
beginning with the Kelts who, next to the Ky-
netce, dwell furthest west in Europe/' — iv. 49.

The Kynetce have reasonably been identified
with the Veneti of Caesar, whose native name is
Gwynecld, and whose locality, in Western Brit-
tany, exactly coincides with the notice of Hero-
dotus. If so, the name is Gallic, and (as such) in
all probability transmitted to Herodotus from
Gallic informants. So that there were two routes
for the earliest information about Britain — the
overland line (so to say), whereon the intelligence
was of Gallic origin; and the way of the Medi-
terranean, wherein the facts were due to the mer-
chants of Tyre, Carthage, or Gades. Direct in-
formation, too, may have been derived from the
Greeks of Marseilles, though the evidence for this
is wanting.

The two foremost writers to whose texts the
preceding observations have been preliminary,
are Diodorus Siculus and Strabo, both of whom
lived during the reign of Augustus, too early for
any information over and above that which was
to be found in the pages of Caesar. Yet as each
contains much that Caesar never told, and, per-
haps, never knew, the immediate authorities
must be supposed to be geographical writers of
Alexandria, one of whom, Eratosthenes, is quoted
by Caesar himself; the remoter ones being the

DIODORUS SICULUS. 43

Phoenician and Gallic traders. The thoroughly
Phoenician origin of the statement of these two
authors is well collected from the following ex-
tracts, which we must consider to be as little
descriptive of the Britannia of Caesar and the
Romans, as they are of the Britannia of the year
51 B.C. Caesar's Britain is Kent, in the last half-
century before the Christian era. Diodorus' Bri-
tain is Cornwall, some 300 years earlier. " They
who dwell near the promontory of Britain, which
is called Belerium, are singularly fond of stran-
gers ; and, from their intercourse with foreign
merchants, civilized in their habits. These people
obtain the tin by skilfully working the soil which
produces it; this being rocky, has earthy inter-
stices, in which, working the ore and then fus-
ing, they reduce it to metal ; and when they have
formed it into cubical shapes they convey it to
certain islands lying off Britain, named Ictis ; for
at the low tides, the intervening space being laid
dry, they carry thither in waggons the tin in great
abundance. A singular circumstance happens
with respect to the neighbouring islands lying be-
tween Europe and Britain ; for, at the high tides,
the intervening passage being flooded, they seem
islands ; but at the low tides, the sea retreating
and leaving much space dry, they appear penin-
sulas. From hence the merchants purchase the
tin from the natives, and carry it across into Gaul ;

44 STRABO.

and finally journeying by land through Gaul for
about thirty days, they convey their burdens on
horses to the outlet of the river Rhone." — v. 21, 22.
So is Strabo's. — "The Cassiterides are ten in
number, and lie near each other in the ocean, to-
wards the north from the haven of the Artabri.
One of them is a desert, but the others are in-
habited by men in black cloaks, clad in tunics
reaching to the feet, and girt about the breast.
Walking with staves, and bearded like goats ; they
subsist by their cattle, leading for the most part a
wandering life. And having metals of tin and
lead, these and skins they barter with the mer-
chants for earthenware, and salt, and brazen ves-
sels. Formerly the Phoenicians alone carried on
this traffic from Gadeira, concealing the passage
from every one ; and when the Romans followed a
certain ship-master, that they also might find the
mart, the ship-master, out of jealousy, purposely
ran his vessel upon a shoal, and leading on those
who followed him into the same destructive dis-
aster, he himself escaped by means of a fragment
of the ship, and received from the State the value
of the cargo he had lost. But the Romans, never-
theless, making frequent efforts, discovered the
passage; and as soon as Publius Crassus, passing
over to them, perceived that the metals were dug
out at a little depth, and that the men being at
peace were already beginning, in consequence of

STRABO. 45

their leisure, to busy themselves about the sea, he
pointed out this passage to such as were willing
to attempt it, although it was longer than that
to Britain."— Lib. iii. p. 239.

Pliny is, to a great degree, in the same predi-
cament with Strabo and Diodorus. Some of the
statements which are not common to him and
Cassar, are undoubtedly referrible to the informa-
tion which the conquest of Britain under Claudius
supplied. Yet the greater part of them is old
material — Greek in origin, and, as such, referrible
to Western rather than Eastern Britain, and to the
era of the Carthaginians rather than the Romans.
Solinus' account is of this character ; his Britain
being Western Britain and Ireland almost ex-
clusively.

A poem of Festus Avienus, itself no earlier than
the end of the fourth century, concludes the list
of those authors who represent the predecessors
of Caesar in the description of Britain. Recent as
it is, it is important ; since some of the details are
taken from the voyage of Himilco, a Carthagi-
nian. He supplies us with a commentary upon
the word Bemeter, in the so-called Orphic poem —
a commentary which will soon be exhibited.

The points then of contact between the British
Isles and the Continent of Europe, were two in
number. They were far apart, and the nations
that visited them were different. Both, indeed,

46 BACCHIC RITES.

were in the south; but one was due east, the
other due west. The first, or Kentish Britain,
was described late, described by Caesar, commer-
cially and politically connected with Gaul, and
known to a great extent from Gallic accounts.
The second, or Cornish Britain, was in political
and commercial relation with the Phoenician por-
tions of Spain and Africa, or with Phoenicia itself;
was known to the cotemporaries of Herodotus,
and was associated with Ireland in more than
one notice. Both were British. But who shall
answer for the uniformity of manners throughout?
It is better to be on our guard against the influ-
ence of general terms, and to limit rather than
extend certain accounts of early writers. A prac-
tice may be called British, and yet be foreign to
nine-tenths of the British Islands. There were
war-chariots in Kent and in Aberdeenshire, and
so far war-chariots were part of the British ar-
moury ; but what authority allows us to attribute
to the old Cornishmen and Devonians? Better
keep to particulars where we can.

As the ancient name for the populations of
Cornwall and Devonshire was Damnonii, the
Damnonii will be dealt with separately. It will
be time enough to call them Britons when a more
general term becomes necessary. Two-thirds of
the notice of them have been given already in the
extracts from Strabo and Diodorus, in which the

BACCHIC RITES. 47

long beards and black dress must be noticed for
the sake of contrast. No such description would
suit the Britons of the eastern coast.

The so-called Orphic poem places the wide
houses of the goddess Demeter in Britain. Stand-
ing by itself, this is a mysterious passage. But it
has been said that an extract from Avienus will
help to explain it —

■ " Hie chorus ingens

Faminei coetus pulchri colit orgia Bacchi.
Producit noctem ludus sacer ; aera pulsant
Vocibus, et crebris late sola calcibus urgent.
Non sic Absynthi prope flumina Thracis alumnae
Bistonides, non qua celeri ruit agmine Ganges,
Indorum populi stata curant festa Lvseo."

There were maddening orgies amongst the
sacred rites of the Britons — orgies, that whilst
they reminded one writer of the Bacchic dances,
reminded another of the worship of Demeter.
That these belonged to the western Britons is an
inference from the fact of their being mentioned
by the Greek writers, i. e., from those who drew
most from Phoenician authorities. Avienus, as we
have seen, thinks of the Bacchae as a parallel. So
does Pausanius —

" Nee spatii distant Nesidum litora longe ;
In quibus uxores Amnitum Baccliica sacra
Concelebrant, hederse foliis tecteeque corymbis."

So does Dionysius Periegeta; indeed the three
accounts seem all referrible to one source. But

BACCHIC RITES.

not so Strabo. That writer, or rather his autho-
rity Artemidorus, finds his parallel in Ceres. "Ar-
temidorus states, with regard to Ceres and Pro-
sepine, what is more worthy of credit. For
he says, that there is an island near Britain
wherein are celebrated sacred rites, similar to
such as are celebrated in Samothrace to these
goddesses/'

Strabo's — or rather Artemidorus' — parallel is
the same as that of the Orphic poem, and, proba-
bly, is referrible to the same source. Damnonian
Britain, then, or the tin-country, had its orgies
— orgies which may as easily have been Phoeni-
cian as indigenous, and as easily indigenous as
Phoenician : orgies, too, may have been wholly
independent of Druidism, and representative of
another superstition.

Between the Damnonian Britons of the Land's-
end and the Britons of Kent, as described by
Cassar, there may or there may not have been
strong points of contrast. That there were se-
veral minor points of difference is nearly certain.
The a priori probabilities arising from the pecu-
liarities of their industrial occupations and com-
mercial relations suggest the view; the historical
notices confirm rather than invalidate it. Frag-
ments, however, of this history is all that can be
collected. We have followed the Alexandrian
critics in the west; let us now follow a personal

BRITONS OF C^SAR. 49

observer in the east, Caesar — himself a great part
of the events that he describes. The Britons of
b.c. Kent first appear as either tributaries or
5?- subjects to one of the Gallic chiefs, Divitia-
cus, king of the Suessiones, or people of Soissons
in Champagne; so that they are the members of
a considerable empire, or at least of an important
political confederation, before a single Roman
plants his foot on their island. But the vassal-
age is either partial or nominal, nor is it limited
to the members of the Belgic branch of the Gauls ;
for the Veneti were a people of Brittany, whose
name is still preserved under the form Yannes,
the name of a Breton district, and who were
b.c. true Galli. Yet, in the next year, they call
56. upon the Britons for assistance, which is
afforded them, in the shape of ships and sailors ;
the Yeneti being amongst the most maritime of
the Gallic populations.

In looking at these two alliances it may, per-
haps, be allowed us to suppose that the parts
most under the control of Divitiacus were the
districts that lay nearest to him, Kent and Herts ;
whereas it was the southern coast that was in so
intimate a relation with the Yeneti. This is what
I meant when I said that the sovereignty of Divi-
tiacus might have been partial.
b.c. Caesar prepares to punish the islanders
55. for their assistance to his continental ene-

50 BRITONS OF C^ISAR.

mies; partly tempted by the report of the value
of the British pearls, a fact which indicates com-
merce and trade between the two populations.
The Britons send ambassadors, whom Caesar sends
back, and along with them Commius the Attreba-
tian, a man of the parts about Artois. Commius
the Crooked, as, possibly, he was named, from the
Keltic Cam, and a namesake of the valiant Welsh-
man David Gam, who fought so valiantly more
than 1300 years afterwards at Agincourt. He
was a king of Caesar's own making, and had had
dealings with the Britons before ; with whom he
had, also, considerable authority. From him
Caesar seems to have obtained his chief prelimi
nary information. But he applied to traders a
well ; telling us, however, that it was only th
coast of Britain that was at all well known. H
is resisted and cut off from supplies at landing, and
unexpectedly attacked after he has succeeded in
doing so. So that he finds reason to respect both
the valour and the prudence of his opponents ;
and, eventually leaves the country for Gaul, hav-
ing demanded hostages from the different States.
Two, only, send them.
B>a The following year the invasion is re-
54. peated. In the first we had a few details,
but no names of either the clans, or their chief.
The second is more fruitful in both. It gives us
the campaign of Cassibelaunus. The most for-

L-

:

BRITONS OF CESAR. 51

midable part of the British armoury was the
war-chariots. These were driven up and down,
before and into, the hostile ranks, by charioteers
sufficiently skilful to keep steady in rough places
and declivities, to take up their master when
pressed, to wheel round and return to the charge
with dangerous dexterity. Meanwhile the mas-
ter, himself, either hurled his javelins on the
enemy from a short distance, or jumping from
the chariot — from the body or yoke indifferently
— descended on the ground, and fought single-
handed. When pressed by the cavalry they re-
treated to the woods ; which, in many cases, were
artificially strengthened by stockades.

About eighty miles from the sea, Caesar reach-
ed the boundaries of the kingdom of Cassibelau-
nus, now the head of the whole Britannic Con-
federacy; but until the discordant populations
became united by a sense of their common dan-
ger, an aggressive and ambitious warrior, involv-
ed in continuous hostilities with the populations
around. His name is evidently compound. The
termination, -belaunus, or -belinus, we shall meet
with again. The Cass- is not unreasonably sup-
posed to exist at the present moment in the name
of the Hundred of Cassio, in Herts (whence
Cassio-hury).

This is the first British proper name. The
next is that of the Trinobantes — beginning with

52 BRITONS OF CiESAR.

the common Keltic prefix (tre-) meaning 'place.
Imanuentius, the king, had been slain in some
previous act of aggression by Cassibelaunus, and
his son Mandubratius had fled to Caesar whilst in
Gaul. He is now restored npon giving hostages.

In the list which follows of the population
who sent hostages to Caesar, we find the name
of the Gassi; which suggests the notion of Cassi-
belaunus' own subjects have become unfaithful to
him. The others are Cenimagni, the Segontiaci,
the Ancalites, and the Bibroci.

Caesar seems now to be in Hertfordshire, west
of London, i.e., about Cassio-bury, the stockaded
village, or head-quarters, of Cassibelaunus — Cas-
sibelaunus himself being in Kent. Here he suc-
ceeds in exciting four chiefs, Cingetorix (observe
the Keltic termination, -orix), Carvilius, Taximj
gulus, and Segonax, to attack the ships ; in which
attempt they are repulsed with the loss of one of
their principal men, Lugot-orix.

The campaign ends in Caesar coming to terms
with Cassibelaunus, forbidding any attacks dur-
ing his absence on Mandubratius and the Trim
bantes, and returning to Gaul with hostages.

From an incidental notice of the British boat
in a different part of Caesar's boats, we learn that
those on the Thames, like those on the Severn,
were made of wicker-work and hides — coracles in
short; and from a passage of Avienus we learn

tur-
no-
uts

BRITONS OF CESAR. 53

that the Severn boats were like those of the
Thames —

Non hi carinas quippe pinu texere
Acereve norunt, non abiete, ut usus est,
Curvant faselos ; sed rei ad miraculum
Navigia juncta semper aptant pellibus,
Corioque vastuni sscpe percurrunt salum.

Caesar's conquest was to all intents and pur-
poses no conquest at all. Nevertheless, Augustus
received British ambassadors, and, perhaps, a
nominal tribute. Probably, this was on the
strength of the dependence of the Eastern Bri-
tons on some portion of Gaul. At any rate, there
was no invasion.
A D The latter part of the reign of Tiberius,
20 and the short one of Caligula, give us the
t° palmy period for native Britain — the reign
of Cyno-belin, the father of Caractacus, the
last of her independent kings.

Coins have been found in many places ; but as
it is not always certain that they were not Gallic,
the proofs of a very early coinage in Britain is in-
conclusive. Indeed, the notion that the tin trade
— to which may be added that in fur and salt —
was carried on by barter is the more proba-
ble. But the coins of Cynobelin are numerous.
They have been well illustrated ;* are of gold and
silver ; and whether stamped in Gaul or Britain,

* See the papers of Mr. Beale Post in the "Archaeological
Journal."

54 CONQUEST OF BRITAIN.

indicate civilization of commerce and industry.
The measure of the progress of Britain from the
Stone period upwards, partly referable to indige-
nous development, partly to Gallic, and partly to
Phoenician, intercourse, is to be found in these
coins. It is the civilization of a brave people
endowed with the arts of agriculture and metal-
lurgy, capable of considerable political organiza-
tion, and with more than one point of contact
with the continent — their war-chariots, their lan-
guage, and their Druidism being their chief dis-
tinctive characters. Iron was in use at this time
— though, perhaps, it was rare.

The conquests under Claudius carry us over
new localities ; and they are related by a greal
historian, with more than ordinary means of in-
formation. In Tacitus we read the accounts
Agricola. Yet the information, with the exce]
tion of a few interesting details, is confirmatory
what we have been told before, rather than sug-
gestive of any essential differences between th(
Britons of the interior and the Britons of the
southern coast. The war-chariot was limited to
certain districts. The rule of a woman was toler-
ated. The wives and mothers looked-on upon
the battles of the husbands and daughters. They
may be said, indeed, to have shared in them.
Their cries, and shrieks, and reproaches, their
dishevelled hair, all helped to stimulate the war-

CALEDONIANS. 55

riors, who opposed Suetonius Paulinus in the fast-
nesses of the Isle of Anglesey. The Druids
added fuel to the fiery energy thus excited.
There was the political organization that conso-
lidates kingdoms. There was the spirit of fac-
tion which disintegrates them. As were the
Brigantes, so were the Iceni ; as were the Iceni,
so were the Silures and Ordovices. The same
family likeness runs throughout ; likeness in
essentials, difference in. detail. In Caledonia the
hair was flaxen ; in South Wales curled and
black. The complexion too was florid, from which
Tacitus has drawn certain inferences.

The conquests under Vespasian carry us fur-
ther still into Scotland, and to the Grampians,
against the Caledonians under Galgacus. The
extent to which they differed from the Britons
is not to be collected from the account of Taci-
tus. We expect that they will be as brave ;
but ruder. Still, the details which we get from
the life of Agricola are few. They fought from
chariots, and their swords were broad and blunt.
As the swords of the Bronze period were thin
and pointed, this is an argument in favour of
iron having become the usual material for war-
like weapons as far north as the Grampians.
The historical testimony to the inferior civiliza-
tion of the North Britons, or Caledonians, is to be
found in a later writer, Dio Cassius, in his his-

56

CALEDONIANS.

tory of the campaigns of Severus. " Amongst
the Britons the two greatest tribes are the Cale-
donians and the Masatse ; for even the names
of the others, as may be said, have merged in
these. The Maeatse dwell close to the wall
which divides the island into two parts ; the
Caledonians beyond them. Each of these peo-
ple inhabit mountains wild and waterless, and
plains desert and marshy, having neither walls
nor cities, nor tilth, but living by pasturage, by
the chase, and on certain berries; for of their
fish, though abundant and inexhaustible, they
never taste. They live in tents, naked and bare-
footed, having wives in common, and rearing the
whole of their progeny. Their state is chiefly
democratical, and they are above all things de-
lighted by pillage ; they fight from chariots, hav-
ing small swift horses ; they fight also on foot,
are very fleet when running, and most resolute
when compelled to stand ; their arms consist of
a shield and a short spear, having a brazen knob
at the extremity of a shaft, that when shaken
it may terrify the enemy by its noise ; they
use daggers also ; and are capable of enduring
hunger, thirst, and hardships of every descrip-
tion ; for when plunged in the marshes they
abide there many days, with their heads only
out of water ; and in the woods they subsist on
bark and roots ; they prepare, for all emergen-

CALEDONIANS. 57

cies, a certain kind of food, of which, if they
eat only so much as the size of a bean, they
neither hunger nor thirst. Such, then, is the
Island Britannia, and such the inhabitants of
that part of it which is hostile to us/'

Of Ireland, we have no definite accounts till
much later, so that, with the exception of a
few details, the characteristics of the social con-
dition of that island must be inferred from the
analogy of Great Britain, and from the subse-
quent history of the Irish. Now a rough view
of even the British characteristics is all that
has been attempted in the present chapter. No
historic events have been narrated, except so far
as they elucidate some national or local habit ;
and no such habits and customs have been
noted unless they could be referred to some
particular branch of our populations ; for the
object has been specification rather than gene-
ralization, the indication of certain Cornubian,
Kentish, or Caledonian peculiarities rather than
of British ones. At the same time, the fact that
all the occupants of the British Islands are re-
fer rible to the great Keltic stock, implies the
likelihood of these differences lying within a com-
paratively small compass.

The step that comes next is the history of the
stock itself.

58 THE BRITISH KELTS.

CHAPTER III.

ORIGIN OF THE BRITONS. — KELTS OF GAUL. — THE BELG^I. — WHETHER

KELTIC OR GERMAN. EVIDENCE OF CESAR. — ATTREBATES, BEL-

G.E, REMI, DUROTRIGES AND MORINI, CHAUCI AND MENAPII.

Of the two branches of the Keltic stock the
British will be considered first, and that in re-
spect to its origin.

It is rare that the population of an island is
without clear, definite, and not very distant af-
finities with that of the nearest part of the near-
est continent. The Cingalese of Ceylon can be
traced to India; the Sumatrans to the Malayan
Peninsula ; the Kurile Islanders to the Penin-
sula of Sagalin ; the Guanches of Tenerifle to
the coast of Barbary. The nearest approach to
isolation is in the island of Madagascar, where
the affinities are with Sumatra the Moluccas and
the Malay stock rather than with the opposite
parts of Africa, the coasts of Mozambique and
Zanguibar. But Madagascar has long been the
great ethnological mystery. Iceland, too, was
peopled from Scandinavia and not from Green-
land.

It is in Gaul, then, that we must look for the
mother-country of Kelts ; at least in the first

THE BRITISH KELTS. 59

instance, for Gaul is the nearest point — the white
cliffs of Folkstone being within sight of the op-
posite shore. Yet (as an example of the extent
to which one ethnological question depends upon
another) the Gallic origin of the earliest Britons
has been objected to. For a Keltic population,
indeed, it has been admitted to be the natural
area ; but we have seen that a population other
and earlier than the Keltic has been inferred
from the shape of the skulls, and other pheno-
mena of the Stone period. Now for such a
population as this, Jutland or Sleswick has been
considered the more likely locality, since the
skulls in question have been compared to those
of the Laplanders and Finns ; and, if this be
true, the farther north we carry the home of
the British aborigines, the less we find it neces-
sary to bring the Finn or Lap families south-
ward. This reasoning is valid if the original
fact of any pre-Keltic population be true. Those,
however, who doubt the premises, have no need
to refine upon the current notion of Gaul being
the original home of the Britons. Gaul, then, is
the ground from which we take our view of the
great Keltic division of the human species in its
integrity ; for, hitherto, we have seen but the
western offsets of it.

That the country between the Seine and
Garonne, corresponding with the provinces of

60 KELTS OF GAUL.

Normandy, Brittany, Maine, Anjou, Poitiers, the
Isle of France, and the Orleannois, was Keltic,
has never been doubted. The evidence of Caesar
is express ; and there is neither objection nor
cavil to set against it. There it is, where, at
the present moment, the Keltic Breton of Brit-
tany continues to be the language of the common
people.

The central and south-eastern parts of France
— the Nivernois, Burgundy, the Bourbonnois, the
Lionnois, Auvergne, Dauphiny, Languedoc, Savoy,
and Provence were — chiefly Keltic. Perhaps they
were wholly so ; but as the Ligurians of Italy,
and Iberians of Spain are expressly stated to
have met on the lower Rhone, it is best to
qualify this assertion. At the same time, good
reasons can be given for considering that the
Ligurians were but little different from the
other Gauls.

South of the Garonne the ancient population
was Iberia

Switzerland, or the ancient Helvetia, was
Keltic, and beyond Switzerland, along the
banks of the Danube, and in the fertile plains
of Northern Italy, intrusive and conquering
Kelts were extended as far east as Styria, and
as far south as Etruria ; but these were offsets
from the main body of the stock, whose true
area was Gaul and the British isles.

KELTS OF GAUL. 61

The parts between the Seine and Rhine, the
valleys of the Marne, the Oise, the Somme, the
Sambre, the Meuse, and the Moselle were Bel-
gic. Treves was Belgian ; Luxumbourg, Bel-
gian ; the Netherlands, Belgian. Above all,
French Flanders, Artois, and Picardy — the parts
nearest Britain — the parts within sight of Kent
— the parts from whence Britain was most likely
to be peopled — were Belgian.

Now, as Britain was originally Keltic, unless
Belgium be Keltic also, we shall meet with a
difficulty.

In my own mind Belgium was originally Kel-
tic ; and, perhaps, nine ethnologists out of ten
hold the same opinion. At the same time, fair
reasons can be given for an opposite doctrine,
fair reasons for believing the Belgce to have been
German — as German as the Angles of old, as
German as the present Germans of Germany,
as German as the Dutch of Holland, and, what
is more to the purpose, as German as the pre-
sent Flemings of Flanders, possibly occupants
of the ancient, and certainly occupants of the
modern, Belgium.

Upon the latter fact we must lay considerable
weight. Modern Belgium is as truly the coun-
try of two languages and of a double population
as Wales, Ireland, or Scotland. There is the
French, which has extended itself from the

bZ THE BELG^.

south, and the Flemish, which belongs to Hol-
land and the parts northwards ; a form of speech
which differs from the true Dutch less than the
Lowland Scotch does from the English, and far
less than the Dutch itself does from the German.
More than this. South of the line which sepa-
rates the French and Flemish, traces of the pre-
vious use of the latter language are both definite
and numerous, occurring chiefly in the names of
places such as Dunkirk, Wissant, &c.

Now, as the French language has encroached
upon the Flemish, and the Flemish has receded
before the French, nothing is more legitimate
than the conclusion than that, at some earlier
period, the dialects of the great Germanic stock
extended as far south as the Straits of Dover ;
and, if so, Germans might have found their way
into the south-eastern counties of England 2000
years ago, or even sooner. Hence, instead of the
Angles and Saxons having been the first con-
querors of the Britons, and the earlier introdu-
cers of the English tongue, Belgaa of Kent, Belgse
of Surrey, Belgse of Sussex, and Belgse of Hamp-
shire, may have played an important, though
unrecorded, part in that long and obscure pro-
cess which converted Keltic Britain into German
England, the land of the Welsh and Gaels into
the land of the Angles and Danes, the clansmen
of Cassibelaunus, Boadicea, Caractacus and Gal-

THE BELG.E. 63

gacus into the subjects of Egbert, Athelstan, and
Alfred.

Such views have not only been maintained,
but they have been supported by important tes-
timonies and legitimate arguments. Foremost
amongst the former come two texts of Caesar,
one applying to the well-known Belgae of the
continent, the others to certain obscurer Belgse
of Great Britain. When Caesar inquired of the
legates of Remi, the ancient occupants, under
their ancient name, of the parts about Rheims,
what States constituted the power of the Belgae,
and what was their military power, he found
things to be as follows — " The majority of the
Belgce were derived from the Germans (ple-
rosque Belgas ortos esse ah Germanus). Hav-
ing in the olden time crossed the Rhine, they
settled in their present countries, on account of
the fruitfulness of the soil, and expelled the
Gauls, who inhabited the parts before them.
They alone, with the memory of our fathers, when
all Gaul was harassed by the Teutones and Cim-
bri, forbid those enemies to pass their frontier.
On the strength of this they assumed a vast
authority in the affairs of war, and manifested a
high spirit. Their numbers were known, because,
united by relationships and affinities (propinqui-
tatibus ad finitatibusque conjuncti), it could be
ascertained what numbers each chief could bring

64 THE BELG.E.

with him to the common gathering for the war.
The first in numbers, valour, and influence were
the Bellovaci. These could make up as many as
100,000 fighting men. Of these they promised
40,000 ; for which they were to have the whole
management of the war. Their neighbours were
the Suessiones, the owners of a vast and fertile
territory. Their king Divitiacus was yet remem-
bered as the greatest potenate of all Gaul, whose
rule embraced a part of Britain as well. Their
present king was Gallus. Such was his justice
and prudence, that the whole conduct of the war
was voluntarily made over to him. Their cities
were twelve in number; their contingent 50,000
soldiers. The Nervii, the fiercest and most dis-
tant of the confederacy, would send as many;
the Attrebates 15,000, the Ambiani 10,000, the
Morini 22,000, the Menapii 9,000, the Caleti
10,000, the Velocasses and Yeromandui 10,000,
the Aduatici 29,000 ; the Condrusi, Eburones, Cse-
rasi, and Psemani, who were collectively called
Germans (qui uno nomine Germani appellan-
tur) might be laid at 40,000/'— Bell. Gall. 11, 4.

Let us consider this as evidence (to a certain
extent) of the north of Gaul having been German,
without, at present, asking how far it is conclu-
sive. If we look to Caesar's description of Britain
we shall find the elements of a second proposi-
tion, viz., that " what is true of the northern coast

THE BELG.E. 65

of Gaul, is true of the southern coast of Britain/' *
So that if the Belgse were Germans in the time
of Csesar, the populations of Kent, Surrey, and
Sussex were German also.

Caesar's statement is, " that the interior of Bri-
tain is inhabited by those who are recorded to
have been born in the island itself; whereas the
sea-coast is the occupancy of immigrants from the
country of the Belgoe, brought over for the sake
of either war or plunder. All these are called by
names nearly the same as those of the States
they came from, names which they have re-
tained in the country upon which they made
war, and in the land whereon they settled." —
B. G., v. 12.

I submit that these two statements would give
us unexceptionable evidence in favour of the
Belgse being Germans, and the south-eastern Bri-
tons being Belga?, in case they stood with no
conflicting assertions to set against them, and
no presumptions in favour of an opposite doc-
trine ; in which case the inference that Kent was
German would be irrefragable, and would stand
thus —

The Belgse were Germans —

* These are the exact words of one of the ablest supporters of
the Germanic origin of the south-eastern Britons, Mr. E. Adams,
in a paper entitled, " Remarks on the probability of Gothic Set-
tlements in Britain Previously to a.d. 450." — Philological Tran-
sactions, No. ciii.

66 THE BELG^E.

The south-eastern Britons were the same class
with the Belgse —

Therefore they were Germans.

Such a syllogism, I repeat, would be in proper
form, and the inference satisfactory.

But there is a great deal to set against both :
so much as to make it extremely probable that
the utmost that can be got from the first state-
ment is, that a part of the Belgse, and more espe-
cially the Condrusi, Eburones, Cserasi, and Pae-
mani were Germans only in the way that the
people of Guernsey and Jersey are English, i. e.,
politically but not ethnologically ; and that the
second only proves that certain national names
occurred on both sides of the channel.

If we look at the numerous local, national, and
individual names of the Belgse, we find that they
agree so closely in form with those of the un-
doubted Gauls, as to be wholly undistinguishable.
The towns end in -acum, -briva, -magus, -dunum,
and -durum, and begin with Ver-, Ccer-, Con-, and
Tre-, just like those of Central Gallia; so that we
lmve — to go no farther than the common maps
Viriovi-txcum, Minori-acum, Origi-acum, Turn-
acum, Bag- acum, Camar -acum, Nemet -acum,
Catusi-acum, Gemim-acum, Blari-acum, Mederi-
acum, Tolhi-acum; Samaro-ftrim; Nowio-magus,
Moso-magus; Yero-dunum; Marco-durum. Theo-
durum; Fer-omandui; Coer-esi; CW-drusi ; Trc-

we

THE BELGJE. 67

viri — all Gallic compounds on Belgian ground,
and all forms either wholly foreign to any Ger-
man area, or else exceedingly rare. Now it is no
objection to this remarkable and exclusive pre-
ponderance of Gallic names in Belgian geography,
to say that there is no proof of the designations
in question being native ; and that, although they
existed in the language of Caesar's informants, who
were Gauls, they were strange to the Belgse, even
as the word Welsh is strange to a Cambro-Briton
— being the name by which he is known to an
Englishman, but not the true and native denomi-
nation. I say that all argument of this kind,
valid as it is in so many other cases where it is
never applied, has no place here; since Caesar's
informants about the Belgic populations were the
Belgse themselves, and it is inconceivable that
they should have used nothing but Gallic terms
when they spoke of themselves, if they had not
been Gauls.

The names of the individual Belgic chiefs are
as Gallic as those of the towns and nations, e. g.,
Commius and Diviaticus, and so are those of
such Britons as Gassibelaunus.

I submit that this is, as far as it goes, a reason
for limiting rather than extending all such state-
ments as the ones in question. And it is by no
means a solitary one. A statement of Strabo
confirms it : — " The Aquitanians are wholly dif-

68 THE BELGiE.

ferent " (i. e., from tlie other Gauls) " not only in
language, but in their bodies, — wherein they are
more like the Iberians than the Gauls. The rest
are Gallic in look ; but not all alike in language.
Some differ a little. Their politics, too, and man-
ners of life differ a little." — Lib. iv. c. 1.

With the external evidence, then, of Strabo,
coinciding with the internal evidence derived
from the geographical, national, and individual
names, it seems illegitimate to infer from the text
of Caesar more than has been suggested.

Unless we believe the Belgae of Picardy to
have been Germans, the second fact stated by
Caesar, viz., the Belgic origin of the south-east-
ern Britons is comparatively unimportant, since
it merely shews that between the Britons of
the south-eastern coast, and those of the in-
terior, there were certain points of difference,
the former being recent immigrants, and Bel-
gium being the country from which they mi-
grated. Nevertheless, this introduces a diffi-
culty ; since, by drawing a distinction between
the men of Kent, and the men of the Midland
Counties, we are precluded from arguing that
the Britons in general belonged to the same
class as the Gauls ; inasmuch as Caesar s <
cription may fairly be said to apply to
Belgic Britons only.

I think, myself, that Caesar's statement n

THE BELG.E. 69

be taken as an inference rather than as evidence;
in other words, he must not be considered to
say that certain Attrebates and Belgce crossed the
Straits of Dover and settled in Britain, but that, as
certain portions both of Belgium and Britain bore
the same names, a migration had taken place ;
such being the explanation of the coincidence.
Or, if we suppose Csesar himself to have been
too acute a reasoner to confound a conclusion
with a fact (as, perhaps, he was), we may attri-
bute the inference to his informants. Whoever
is in the habit of sifting ethnological evidence,
is well aware that a confusion of kind in question
is one of the commonest of the difficulties he
must deal with.

At the same time, that there were some actual
Belgae in Britain is likely enough ; but that they
were a separate substantive population, of suffi-
cient magnitude to be found in all the parts of
Britain where Belgic names occurred, and still
more that they were Germans, is an unsafe infer-
ence ; safe, perhaps, if the two texts of Csesar stood
alone, but unsafe, if we take into consideration
the numerous facts, statements, and presumptions
which complicate and oppose them.

The Belgic names themselves, which occurred
in Britain, were as follows : —

a. Attrebates. — There were Attrebates both in
Belgium and Britain ; the Gaelic ones in Artois,

70 THE BELG.E.

which is only Attrebates in a modern form. Con-
siderable importance attaches to the fact, that
before Caesar visited Britain in person, he sent
Commius, the Attrebatian, before him. Now,
this Commius was first conquered by Csesar, and
afterwards set up as a king over the Morini.
That Commius gave much of his information
about Britain to Caesar is likely ; perhaps he was
his chief informant. He, too, it was who, know-
ing the existence of Attrebates in Britain, pro-
bably drew the inference which has been so
lately suggested, viz., that of a Belgae migra-
tion, or a series of them. Yet the Attrebates of
Britain were so far from being on the coast, that
they must have lain west of London, in Berk-
shire and Wilts ; since Caesar, who advanced, at
least, as far as Chertsey, where he crossed the
Thames, meets nothing but Cantii, Trinobantes,
Cenimagni, Segontiaci, Ancalites, Bibroci and
Cassi. It is Ptolemy who first mentions the
British Attrebatii ; and he places them between
the Dobuni and the Cantii. Now, as the Dobuni
lay due west of the Silures of South Wales, we
cannot bring the Attrebatii nearer the coast tha
Windsor.

b. The Belgoe. — These — like the Attrebatii,
first mentioned by Ptolemy — are placed south of
the Dobuni, and on the sea-coast between the
Cantii and Damnonii of Devonshire ; so that Sus-

■

THE BELG.E. 71

sex, Hants, and Dorset, may be given them as
their area.

c. The Remi are mentioned by no better an
authority than Richard of Cirencester, as Bibroci
under another name.

d. The Durotriges, too, or people of Dor-set,
are stated by the same authority to have been
called Morini.

e. f. In Ireland we have two populations with
German names ; the Menapii and the Ghauci,
both in the parts about Dublin, and in the neigh-
bourhood of one another. And these are men-
tioned by Ptolemy.

Now, whatever these Belgic names prove, they
do not prove Csesar's statement that it was the
maritime parts of Britain which were Belgic ;
since the Menapii and Chauci must have been
wholly unknown to him, and the Attrebatii lay
inland.

At the same time, they prove something. They
also introduce difficulties in the very simple view
that Britain was solely and exclusively British.
This leads to a further consideration of the de-
tails. The Remi may be disposed of first. They
stand on bad authority, viz., that of a monk of
the twelfth century.

So may the Morini. Though I admit the in-
genuity and soundness of the doctrine that the
existence of a double nomenclature such as that

72

THE BELG.E.

by which the Dur-otriges are called Morini, and
the Morini, Durotriges, is well explained by the
assumption of a second language, and the notion
that the inhabitants of certain districts were
sometimes called by a British, sometimes by a
German, name, the hypothesis is not valid where
the facts can be more easily explained other-
wise. No one would thus explain such words
as Lowlander and Borderer applied to the
people of the Cheviot Hills. Yet both are cur-
rent ; one being given when their relation to
England, the other when their difference from
the Highland Gaels, is expressed.

Now, it so happens that Morini and Duro-
triges are words that can as little be considered
as synonymous terms belonging to different lan-
guages as Lowlander and Borderer ; since good
reasons can be given for referring them both to
the Keltic Their exact import is difficult to as-
certain ; but if we suppose them to mean coasters
and watersidemen, respectively, we get a clear
view of the unlikelihood of one being German
and the other Keltic. Thus —

Duro-triges coincides with the Latin compound
ponticolce, since chvr in "^"elsh, Cornish, and
Armorican means water, and trigaw means to
remain or to inhabit ; trig-ad lad denoting dwel-
lers, or inhabitants, as is well remarked by Prich-
ard, v. iii. 1 28.

THE BELG.E. 73

Mot, in Morini, is neither more nor less than
the Latin word mare* Surely this sets aside
all arguments drawn from the supposed bilin-
gual character of the words Mori ill and Duro-
trlges.

The Cauci and Menapii of Ireland tell a dif-

* This root is important. As it means sea in more European
languages than one, it has created a philological difficulty in the
case of a very interesting gloss, Mori-marum, meaning dead sea ;
where by a strange coincidence the same consonants (m-r) are
repeated, but with a difference of meaning.

Prichard, who drew attention to this remarkable compound,
having stated that a passage in Pliny informed us that the Cim-
bri called the sea in their neighbourhood Mori-marusa, inferred
that the name was Cimbric ; and further argued, that as mor
mawth in Welsh meant the same, the Cimbric tongue was Welsh,
Cambrian, or British. As far as it went the inference was truly
legitimate ; but the reasoning which led to it was deficient. The
likelihood of there being more languages than one wherein both
mor meant sea, and mor meant dead, was overlooked ; though
one of the languages that supplied the coincidence was the
Latin — mare mort-uum.

Another such a tongue was the Slavonic ; and to that tongue
I imagine Morimarusa to be referrible. I also imagine that by
the Cimhri of Pliny were meant the Cimmerii; so that the
Sea of Azof was the true Dead Sea ; or, perhaps, the Propon-
tis ; in which case its present name, the Sea of Marmora, is ex-
plained.

The name of the Province, Ar-mor-ica, means the country on
the sea, and if rendered in Latin would be ad mare. Ar-gail is
such another word ; and it was the name of the landing-place of
the Gceel=ad Gallos.

To the Grclic Ar-mor-ica, the Slavonians have an exact par-
allel in the word Po-mor-aala ; where po means on, and mor
the sea.

74 THE BELG.E.

ferent tale. One name without the other would
prove but little ; but when we find Gaud in Ger-
many not far from Menapii, and Menapi-i in
Ireland not far from Chauci, the case becomes
strengthened. Yet the likelihood ofMenap, being
the same word as the Menai of the Menai Straits
in Wales, suggests the probability of that word
being a geographical term. Nevertheless, the
contiguity of the two nations is an argument as
far as it goes.

And here I must remark, that the process by
which words originally very different may become
identified when they pass into a fresh language is
not sufficiently attended to. Gaucl is the form
which an Irish, Ghauci that which a German,
word takes in Latin. And the two words are
alike. Yet it is far from certain that they would
be thus similar if we knew either the Gaelic ori-
ginal of one, or the German of the other. A dozen
forms exceedingly different might be excogitated,
which, provided that they all agreed in being
strange to a Roman, would, when moulded into
a Latin form, become alike. Still the argument,
as far as it goes, is valid.

Such are the reasons for believing, at one and
the same time, that the Britons came from Belgic
Gaul, and that the Belgae from whence they came
were Kelts.

We cannot, however, so far consider the origin

THE BELG^E. 75

of the British branch of the Keltic stock to be
disposed of, as to proceed forthwith to the Gaelic ;
another population requires a previous notice.
This is the Pict.

THE PICTS.

CHAPTER IV.

THE PICTS. — LIST OF KINGS. — PEANN FAHEL. — ABER AND INYER.
— THE PICTS PROBABLY, BUT NOT CERTAINLY, BRITONS.

The Picts have never been considered Romans ;
but, with that exception, a relationship with
every population of the British Isles has been
claimed for them. As Germans on the strength
of Tacitus' description of their physical conforma-
tion of the Caledonian, and as Germans on the
strength of the supposed Germanic origin of the
Belgse, the Picts have been held the ancestors of
the present Lowland Scotch. They have been
considered Scandinavians also. On the other
hand, they have been made Gaels, in which case
it is the Highlanders who are their offspring.
They have been considered Britons, and they
have been considered a separate stock.

That they were Kelts rather than Germans is
the commonest doctrine, and that they were
Britons rather than Gaels is a common one ;
the arguments that prove the latter proving
the first a fortiori.

We approach the subject with a notice of the
Irish missionary St. Columbanus, whose native
tongue was, of course, the Irish Gaelic. This was

THE PICTS. 77

unintelligible to the Northern Picts, as is ex-
pressly stated on in Adammanus: — "Alio in tem-
pore quo Sanctus Columba in Pictorum provincia
per aliquot demorabatur dies, quidam cum tota
plebeius familia, verbum vitce per interpretatorem,
Saneto prcedicante vivo, audiens credidit, credens-
que baptizatus est/' — A damn. ap. Colganum. 1. ii.
c. 32.

This, however, only shews that the Pict was
not exactly and absolutely Irish. It might have
approached it. It might also be far more unlike
than the Welsh was.

A document known as the Colbertine MS.,
from being published from the Colbertine Li-
brary, contains a list of Pictish kings. This has
been analysed by Innes and Garnett ; and the
result is, that two names only are more Gaelic
in their form than Welsh — viz., Cineod or Ken-
neth, and Domhnall or Donnell. The rest are
either absolutely contrary to what they would
be if they were Gaelic, or else British rather than
aught else. Thus, the Welsh Gurgust appears in
the Irish Annal as Fergus, or vice versd. Now
the Pict form of this name is Wrgwst, with a
final T, and without an initial F. Elpin, Drust,
Drostan, Wrad, and Necton are close and un-
doubted Pict equivalents to the Welsh names
Owen, Trwst, Trwstan (Tristram), Gwriad, and
Nwyihon.

78 THE PICTS.

The readers of the Antiquary well know the
prominence given to the only two common terms
of the Pict language in existence pen val, or as it
appears in the oldest MSS. of Beda peann fahel.
This is the head of the wall, or caput vail, being
the eastern extremity (there or there abouts) of
the Vallum of Antoninus. Now the present Welsh
form for head is pen; the Gaelic cean. Which
way the likeness lies here, is evident. For the
fahel (or val) the case is less clear. The Gaelic
form is fhail, the Welsh gwall ; the Gaelic being
the nearest.

But some collateral evidence on this subject
more than meets the difficulty. "In the Durham
MSS. of Nennius, apparently written in the
twelfth century, there is an interpolated passage,
stating that the spot in question was in the Scot-
tish or Gaelic language called Genail. Innes and
others have remarked the resemblance between
this appellation and the present Kinneil ; but no
one appears to have noticed that Genail accu-
rately represents the pronunciation of the Gaelic
cean fhail, literally head of wall, f being quies-
cent in construction. A remarkable instance of
the same suppression occurs in Athole, as now
written, compared with the Ath-fothla of the Irish
annalists. Supposing, then, that Genail was sub-
stituted for peann fahel by the Gaelic conquerors
of the district, it would follow that the older ap-

THE PICTS. 79

pellation was not Gaelic, and the inference would
be obvious."*

In thus making pen vol a Pict gloss, I by no
means imagine that any of the three forms were
originally Keltic at all ; since vol, gwal, fhail all
seem variations of the Roman vallum, at least, in
respect to their immediate origin. Still, if out
of three languages, adopting the same word, each
gives a different form, the variation which results
is as much a gloss of the tongue wherein it oc-
curs, as if the word were indigenous. Hence,
whether we say that pen vol are Pict glosses, or
that pen is a Pict gloss, and vol a Pict form is a
matter of practical indifference.

The Vallum Antonini was a work of man's
hands, and its name is of less value than those
of natural objects, such as mountains, rivers, or
lakes. Nevertheless, these latter have been ex-
amined : thus the Ochel Hills in Perthshire are
better explained by the Welsh form uchel than
by the Gaelic nasal. But the most important
word of all is the first element of the words Aber-
nethy, and iV^er-nethy. Both mean the same,
i. e., the confluence of waters, or something very
much of the sort. Both enter freely into compo-
sition, and the compounds thus formed are found
over the greater part of the British Isles as the
names of the mouths of the larger and more im-

* Mr. Garnett, Philogical Transactions, No. II.

89 THE PICTS.

portant rivers. But it is only a few districts
where the two names occur together. Just as we
expect a priori aber occurs when inver is not
to be found, and vice versd. Of the two extremes
Ireland is the area where aber, Wales where in-
ver is the rarer of the two forms ; indeed so rare
are they that the one (aber) rarely, if ever, occurs
in Ireland, the other (inver) rarely, if ever, in
"Wales. Now as Ireland is Gaelic, and Welsh
British, the two words may fairly be considered to
indicate, where they occur, the presence of these
two different tongues respectively.

The distribution of the words in question has
long been an instrument of criticism in determin-
ing both the ethnological position of the Pict
nation, and its territorial extent; and the details
are well given in the following table of Mr.
Kemble's :

"If we now take a good map of England and Wales and Scot-
land, we shall find the following data : —

"In Wales :

"Aber-ayon, lat. 51° 37' K, long. 3° 46' W.
Aber-afon, lat. 51° 37' N.
Abergavenny, lat. 51° 49' K, long. 3° O'W.
Abergwilli, lat. 51° 51' N., long. 4° 16' W.
Aberystwith, lat. 52° 24' N., long. 4° 6' W.
Aberfraw, lat. 53° 12' N., long. 4° 30' W.
Abergee, lat. 53° 17' K, long. 3° 17' W.

"In Scotland:

"Aberlady, lat. 56° 1' N., long. 2° 52' W.
Aberdour, lat. 56° 4' N., long. 3° 16' W.

THE PICTS. 81

In Scotland:

Aberfoil, lat. 56° 11' N., long. 4° 24' W.

Abernethy, lat. 56° 20' K, long. 3° 20' W.

Aberbrothic, lat. 56° 33' N., long. 2° 35' W.

Aberfeldy, lat. 56° 37' N., long. 3° 55' W.

Abergeldie, lat. 57° 5' N., long. 3° 10' W.

Aberchalder, lat. 57° 7' N., long. 4° 44' W.

Aberdeen, lat. 57° 8' N., long. 2° 8' W.

Aberchirdir, lat. 57° 35' N., long. 2° 34' W.

Aberdour, lat. 57° 40' N., long. 2° 16' W.

Inverkeithing, lat, 56° 2' N., long. 3° 36' W.

Inverary, lat. 56° 15" K, long. 5° 5' W.

Inverarity, lat. 56° 36' K, long. 2° 54' W.

Inverbervie, lat. 56° 52' K, long. 2° 21' W.

Invergeldie, lat. 57° 1' K, long. 3° 12' W.

Invernahavan, lat. 57° 2' N., long. 4° 12' W.

Invergelder, lat. 57° 4' K, long. 3° 15' W.

Invermorison, lat. 57° 14' N., long. 4° 34' W.

Inverness, lat. 57° 29' K, long. 4° 11' W.

Invernetty, lat. 57° 29' K, long. 1° 51' W.

Inveraslie, lat. 57° 59' N., long. 4° 40' W.

Inver, lat. 58° 10' N., long. 5° 10' W.
Tbe line of separation tben between tbe Welsh or Pictish, and
the Scotch or Irish, Kelts, if measured by the occurrence of these
names, would run obliquely from S.AV. to N.E., straight up Loch
Fyne, following nearly the boundary between Perthshire and
Argyle, trending to the N.E. along the present boundary between
Perth and Inverness, Aberdeen and Inverness, Banf and Elgin,
till about the mouth of the river Spey. The boundary between
the Picts and English may have been much less settled, but it
probably ran from Dumbarton, along the upper edge of Renfrew-
shire, Lanark and Linlithgow till about Abercorn, that is along
the line of the Clyde to the Frith of Forth.*.

It cannot be denied that, in the present state
of our knowledge, the inference from the preced-

* Saxons in England. — Vol. ii. pp. 4, 5.

Q

82 THE PICTS.

ing table is that, whether Pict or not, more than
two-thirds of Scotland exhibit signs of British
rather than Gaelic occupancy.

This is as much as can be said at present : for
it must be added that all the previous criticism
has proceeded upon the notion that penn fahel,
&c, are Pict words. What, however, if they be
Pict only in the way that man, woman, &c, are
Welsh; i. e., words used by a population within
the Pict area, but not actually Pict? The refine-
ment upon the opinion suggested by the present
chapter, which arises out of the view, will be no-
ticed after certain other questions have been
dealt with.

THE GAELS. 83

CHAPTER V.

ORIGIN OF THE GAELS. — DIFFICULTIES OF ITS INVESTIGATION. —
NOT ELUCIDATED BY ANY RECORDS, NOR YET BY TRADITIONS.
— ARGUMENTS FROM THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE BRITISH
AND GAELIC LANGUAGES.— THE BRITISH LANGUAGE SPOKEN IN
GAUL. — THE GAELIC NOT KNOWN TO BE SPOKEN IN ANY PART
OP THE CONTINENT. — LHUYD'S DOCTRINE. — THE HIBERNIAN
HYPOTHESIS. — THE CALEDONIAN HYPOTHESIS. — POSTULATES.

The origin of the Britons has been a question
of no great difficulty They could not well have
come from the west, because Britain lies almost
on the extremity of the ancient world ; so we look
towards the continent of Europe, and find, ex-
actly opposite to the Britons, the Gauls, speaking
a mutually intelligible language. On this we
rest, just pausing for a short time to dispose of
one or two refinements on the natural inference.

But if no such language as that of the ancient
Gauls, a language closely akin to the British, had
been discovered, the ethnologist would have been
put to straits; indeed, he would have had to be
satisfied with saying that Gaul was the likeliest
part of Europe for the Britons to have come from.
No more. A strong presumption is all he would
have obtained. The similarity, however, of the
languages has helped him.

Now the difficulty which has just been noticed

84 GAELIC BRANCH

as a possible one in the investigation of the origin
of the Britons, is a real one in the case of the
Gaels. The exact parallel to the Gaelic language
cannot be found on any part of the continent.
Hence, whilst the British branch of the Keltic
is found in both England and Gaul, — on the con-
tinent as well as in the Islands, — the Gaelic is
limited to the British Isles exclusively. Neither
in Gaul itself, nor the parts either north or south
of Gaul can any member of the Gaelic branch be
found.

Even within the British Islands the Gaelic is
limited in its distribution. There is no British in
Ireland, and no Gaelic in South Britain. In Scot-
land both the tongues occur, the Gaelic being
spoken north of the British. Now this position of
the Gaelic to the west and north of the British
increases the difficulty — since it is cut off from all
connexion with the continent, and unrepresented
by any continental tongue.

The history, then, of the Gaels is that of an
isolated branch of the Keltic stock ; and it is
this isolation which creates the difficulties of their
ethnology. No historical records throw any
light upon their origin — a statement which the
most sanguine investigator must admit. But
tradition, perhaps, is less uncommunicative. Many
investigators believe this. For my own part I
should only be glad to be able to do so. As

OF THE KELTIC STOCK. 85

it is, however, the arguments of the present
chapter will proceed as if the whole legendary
history of Ireland and Scotland, so far as it re-
lates to the migrations by which the islands
were originally peopled by the Gaels, were a
blank — the reasons for the scepticism being with-
held for the present. But only for the present.
In the seventh chapter they will be given as
fully as space allows.

The present arguments rest wholly upon a fact
of which the importance has more than once been
foreshadowed already, and which the reader anti-
cipates. Let us say, for the sake of illustration,
that the British and Gaelic differ from each other
as the Latin and Greek. The parallel is a rough
one, but it will suffice as the basis of some criti-
cism.

Languages thus related cannot be in the rela-
te ©

tion of mother and daughter, i. e., the one cannot
be derived from the other, as the English is from
the Anglo-Saxon, or the Italian from the Latin.
The true connexion is different. It is that of
brother and sister, rather than of parent and
child. The actual source is some common mother-
tongue ; a mother-tongue which may become ex-
tinct after the evolution of its progeny. Hence,
in the particular case before us, the Gaelic and
British must have developed themselves, each
independently of the other, out of some com-

86 GAELIC BRANCH

mon form of speech. And the development
must have taken place within the British Is-
lands ; the doctrine being that out of a lan-
guage which at some remote period was neither
British nor Gaelic, but which contained the
germs of both, the western form of speech took
one form, the southern another — the results be-
ing in the one case the British, in the other the
Gaelic, tongue.

But that common mother-tongue at the re-
mote period in question, the period of the earliest
occupancy of Britain, must have been spoken on
both sides of the Channel — in Gaul as well as the
British Islands. And here (i. e., in Gaul) it may
have done one of two things. It may have re-
mained unaltered ; or, it may have undergone
change. Now in either case it would be different
from both the Gaelic and the British. In the
former alternative it would have been stereo-
typed as it were, and so have preserved its ori-
ginal characters, whilst the Gaelic and British had
adopted new ones. In the latter it would have
altered itself after its own peculiar fashion ; and
those very peculiarities would have made it other
than British as well as other than Gaelic. Yet
what is the fact? The ancient language of Gaul,
though as unlike the Gaelic as a separate and
independent development was likely to make it,
was not unlike the British. On the contrary,

OF THE KELTIC STOCK. 87

it was sufficiently like it to be intelligible to a
Briton. Now I hold this similarity to be con-
clusive against the doctrine that the British and
Gaelic languages were developed out of some com-
mon mother-tongue within the British Islands.
Had they been so the dialects of Gaul would have
been far more unlike the British than they were.

The British then, at least, did not acquire its
British character in Britain, but on the continent ;
and it was introduced into England as a language
previously formed in Gaul.

For the Gaelic there is no such necessity for a
continental origin ; indeed at the first view, the
probabilities are in favour of its having origin-
ated in Britain. It cannot be found on the con-
tinent; and, such being the case, its continental
origin is hypothetical. One thing, however, is
certain, viz., that if the Gaelic were once the only
language of the British Isles, the conquests and
encroachments of the Britons who displaced it,
must have been enormous. In the whole of South
Britain it must certainly have been superseded,
and in half Scotland as well : whilst, if, before
its introduction into Great Britain, it were spoken
on any part of the continent, the displacement
must have been greater still.

Now, the hypothesis as to the origin of the
Gaels may take numerous forms. I indicate
the following three. —

88

GAELIC BRANCH

1. The first may be called Lhuyd's doctrine,
since Humphrey Lhuyd, one of the best of our
earlier archaeologists, suggested it. Mr. Garnett
has spoken of it with respect ; but he evidently
hesitates to admit it. And it is only with
respect that it should be mentioned ; for, it is
highly probable. It makes the original popu-
lation of all the British Isles — England as well
as Scotland and Ireland — to have been Gaelic,
Gaelic to the exclusion of any Britons what-
ever It makes a considerable part of the con-
tinent Gaelic as well. In consequence of this,
the Britons are a later and intrusive population,
a population which effected a great and complete
displacement of the earlier Gaels over the whole
of South Britain, and the southern part of Scot-
land. Except that they were a branch of the
same stock as the Gaels, their relation to the
aborigines was that of the Anglo-Saxons to
themselves at a later period. The Gaels first ;
then the Britons ; lastly the Angles. Such is the
sequence. The general distribution of these two
branches of the Keltic stock leads to Lhuyd's
hypothesis ; in other words, the presumptions
are in its favour. But this is not all. There
are certainly some words — the names, of course,
of geographical objects — to be found in both Eng-
land and Gaul, which are better explained by
the Gaelic than the British language. The most

OF THE KELTIC STOCK. 89

notable of these is the names of such rivers as
the Exe, Axe, and (perhaps) Oose, which is better
illustrated by the Irish term uisge (ivhiskey,
water), than by any Welsh or Armorican one.

2. The second doctrine may be called the
Hibernian hypothesis. It allows to the Britons
of England, and South Scotland any amount of
antiquity, making them aboriginal to Great Bri-
tain. The Gaels of the Scottish Highlands it
derives from Ireland ; a view supported by a
passage in Beda.* Ireland is thus the earliest
insular occupancy of the Gael. But whence
came they to Ireland? From some part south
and west of the oldest known south-western
limits of the Keltic area, from Spain, perhaps ;
in which case a subsequent displacement of the
original Kelts of the continent by the Iberians —
the oldest known stock of the Peninsula — must
be assumed. But as there must be some assump-
tions somewhere, the only question is as to its
legitimacy.

3. The third hypothesis — the Caledonian —
reverses the second, and deduces the Irish Gaels
from Scotland, and the Scotch Gaels from some
part north of the oldest known Keltic bound-
ary and in the direction of Scandinavia. Like
both the others, this involves a subsequent dis-
placement of the mother-stock.

* See Chapter viii.

90 EOMAN INFLUENCES.

CHAPTEK VI.

ROMAN INFLUENCES. — AGRICOLA. — THE WALLS AND RAMPARTS OF
ADRIAN, ANTONINUS, AND SEVERUS. — BONOSU8. — CARAUSIUS. —
THE CONSTANTIAN FAMILY. FRANKS AND ALEMANNI IN BRI-
TAIN. FOREIGN ELEMENTS IN THE ROMAN LEGIONS.

The steady and continuous operation of Roman
influences may be said to begin in the reign of
Claudius, A.D. 43 ; the sceptre of Cynobelin hav-
ing passed into the hands of his sons. Against
these, and against the other princes of Britain,
such as Caradoc (Caractacus) and Cartismandua,
the active commanders Aulus Plautius and Osto-
rius Scapula are employed. Three lines diverging
from the parts about London give us the direction
of their conquests One running along the valley
of the Thames takes us to the Dobuni of Glouces-
tershire, and the Silures of South Wales ; both of
which are specially enumerated as subdued popula-
tions. The other, almost at right angles with the
last, gives us the operations against the town of
Camelodunum in Essex, the Iceni who afterwards
revolted, and the Brigantes of Yorkshire. The
third is indicated by Paulinus' campaigns in
North Wales, and his bloody deeds in the Isle
of Anglesey, a line of conquest which probably
arose out of the reduction of the midland coun-

AGKICOLA. 91

ties of Northampton, Leicester, Derby, Stafford,
and Shropshire. I do not say that these give us
the actual movements of the Roman army They
serve, however, to note the points where the
special evidence of Roman occupation is most
definite.

In the reign of Yespasian the conquests were
not only consolidated but extended. Agricola
builds his line of forts from the Forth to the Clyde,
and penetrates as far north as the Grampians.
Whether the warriors whom he here met under
Galgacus were Britons, like those whom he had
seen in the south, or Gaels, is a matter which will
be considered hereafter ; but he fought against
them with foreign as well as with Roman soldiers.
The German Usipii formed one, if not more, of his
cohorts ; a circumstance which shews what will be
illustrated, with fuller details, in the sequel, viz.,
that the Roman conquerors of Britain were far
from being exclusively Roman. The Usipii, how-
ever, are the first non-Roman soldiers mentioned
by name. On the west coast of Britain, Agricola
had to deal with the pirates from Ireland —
undoubted Gaels whatever the warriors of the
Grampians may have been.

Roman civilization took root rapidly in Britain,
though in a bad form. The early existence of
lawyers and money-lenders shew this. During the
reign of Domitian the advocates of Britain were

92 AGRICOLA.

known to the satirists of Rome ; and, as early as
that of Nero, the calling-in of a loan by the phi-
sopher Seneca helped to create the great revolt
under Boadicea. But except in respect to the use
of the Roman language, it is doubtful whethe:
the culture was much different from that which
had developed itself under Cynobelin — a civi
lization which though being due, in a great
degree, to Gaul, was also, more or less indirectly,
Roman as well ; but, nevertheless, a civilization
which was unattended with any loss of nation-
ality.

The rampart from the mouth of the Tyne to
the Solway is referred to the reign of Adrian ;
the conversion of Agricola's line of forts into a
continuous wall to that of Aurelius Antoninus.
These boundaries give us two areas. North of
the Antonine frontier the Roman power was
never consolidated, although the eastern half
was occasionally traversed by active command-
ers like the Emperor Servius. It was the
county of the Caledonians and MeataB.

Between the frontier of Agricola and the ram-
part of Adrian, the occupation was less incom-
plete. Incomplete, however, it was ; even when,
in the fourth century, it was made a province by
Theodosius, and in honour of the Emperor of
Valens, called Valentia. A.D. 211, Severus, after
strengthening the Antonine fortifications, dies at

I

!

ROMANS IX BRITAIN. 93

York ; his reign being an epoch of some import-
ance in the history of Roman Britain. In the
first place, it is only up to this reign that our
authorities are at all satisfactory. Caesar, Taci-
tus, and Dio Cassius, have hitherto been our
guides. For the next eighty years, however,
we shall find no cotemporary historian at all,
and when our authorities begin again, the first
will be one of the worthless writers of the Pane-
gyrics. In the next place, the great divisions of
the Britannic populations have hitherto been but
two — the Britons proper and the Caledonians.
The next class of writers will complicate the
ethnology by speaking of the Picts. The chief
change, however, is that in the British popula-
tion itself. The contest, except on the Welsh
and Scotch frontiers, is no longer between the
Roman invader and the British native ; but be-
tween Britain as a Romano-Britannic province,
and Rome as the centre and head of the empire :
in other words, the quarrels with the mother-
country replace the wars against the aborigines.
This, however, is part of the civil history of
Rome, rather than the natural history of Britain.
The contests of Albinus against Severus, and of
Proculus and Bonosus against Probus, are the
earliest instances of the attempts upon the Im-
perial Purple from these quarters ; attempts
which give us the measure of the extent to

94 CARAUSIUS.

which the island was Roman rather than Keltic
— at least in respect to its political history.

Bonosus, himself, had British blood in his veins
although born in Spain, for his mother was a
Gaul ; but as he is called " Briton in origin/' we
may infer that his father was from our own
island. Probus allowed the Britons the privi-
lege of growing vines and of making wine.

In the last ten years of the third century
events thicken. The revolt of Carausius, the
assumption of the empire by Allectus, and the
adoption of Constantius Chlorus by Diocletian
as Caesar, are events of ethnological as well as
political influence. This they are, because they
indicate either the introduction of foreign ele-
ments into Britain, or the infusion of British
blood in other quarters. Carausius, for in-
stance, was a Menapian, and he is not likely
to have been the only one of his times. The
Constantian family, I believe, to have been
more British than even the usual opinion makes
them.

A little consideration will tell us that the
three names of this important pedigree — Con-
stans, Constantius, and Constantinus, have no
etymological connexion with the substantive
Constant la ; in other words, that Gonstans does
not mean the constant Man, just as prudens
means the prudent, or sapiens the wise. No

THE CONSTANTINE FAMILY. 95

such signification will account for the forms in
-uis and -inus. To this it may be added that
the family was of foreign extraction, as were the
families of nearly half the later emperors. The
name, I believe, was foreign also. If so, it was
most probably Keltic ; since con, both as a simple
single term, and as an element of compounds is
a common Keltic proper name. The only fact
against this view is the descent of the first of
the three emperors — Constantius. He was not
born in either Gaul or Britain. On the contrary,
his father was a high official in the Diocese of
Illyricum, and his mother, a niece of the Emperor
Claudius ;* circumstances which, at the first view,
seem to contradict the inference from the name.
They do so, however, in appearance only. The
most unlikely man to have been high in office
in Illyricum was a native Illyrian ; for it was
the policy of Rome to put Kelts in the Slavonic,
and Slavonians in the Keltic, provinces ; just as,
at the present moment, Russia places Finn regi-
ments in the Caucasus, and Caucasian in Fin-
land. If this view be correct, a Keltic name is
evidence, as far as it goes, of Keltic blood.

In the next generation we have to deal with
both historical facts and traditions connected
with the pedigree of Constantine the Great.
That he was born in Britain, and that his

* Niebuhr's Lectures, p. iii, 312.

96

FRANKS IN BRITAIN.

mother was of low origin, are the historical
facts ; that she was the daughter of King Coel
of Colchester is the tradition. The latter is of
any amount of worthlessness, and no stress is
laid upon it. The former are considered con-
firmatory of the present view. The chief sup-
port, however, lies in the British character of the
name.

In the Panegyric of Mamertinus on the Em-
peror Maximian, one of the Augusti, who shared
the imperial power with Diocletian, we have the
first mention of the Picts. Worthless as the Pa-
negyrists are when we want specific facts, they
have the great merit of being cotemporary to the
events they allude to; for allusions of a tanta-
lizing and unsatisfactory character is all we get
from them. However, Mamertinus is the first
writer who mentions the Picts, and he does it in
his notice of the revolt of Carausius.

More important than this is a passage which
gives us an army of Frank mercenaries in the
City of London, as early as A.D. 290 — there or
thereabouts. It is a passage of which too little
notice has, hitherto, been taken — "By so thorough
a consent of the Immortal Gods, 0 unconquered
Caesar, has the extermination of all the enemies,
whom you have attacked, and of the Franks
more especially, been decreed, that even those of
your soldiers, who, having missed their way on a

EARLY SAXONS. 97

foggy sea, reached the town of London, destroyed
promiscuously and throughout the city the whole
remains of that mercenary multitude of barba-
rians, that, after escaping the battle, sacking the
town, and, attempting flight, was still left — a
deed, whereby your provincials were not only
saved, but delighted by the sight of the slaugh-
ter/'

One German tribe, then at least, has set its
foot on the land of Britain as early as the reign
of Diocletian; and that as enemies. How far
their settlement was permanent, and how far the
particular section of them, mentioned by Mamer-
tinus, represented the whole of the invasion, is
uncertain. The paramount fact is the existence
of hostile Franks in Middlesex nearly 200 years
before the epoch of Hengist.

Were there Saxons as well ? This is a question
for the sequel. At present, I remark, that Ma-
mertinus mentions them by name but without
placing them on the soil of Britain. They merely
vexed the British Seas.

Were there any other Germans? Aurelius Vic-
tor suggests that there were. AD. 306, Constan-
tius dies at York, and Constantine, his son, "as-
sisted by all who were about, but especially by
Eroc, King of the Alemanni, assumes the empire."
Now Eroc had accompanied Constantius as an
ally (auxilii gratii); so that there were Ale-

98 ALEMANNI.

manni in Yorkshire, as well as Franks in Mid-
dlesex, with powers, more or less, approaching
those of independent populations ; at any rate, in
a different position from the mere legionary
Germans, of whom further notice will soon be
taken.

In Julian's reign the Picts, Scots, and Attacotti
harass the South Britains. This is on the co-
temporary and unexceptionable evidence of Am-
mianus Marcellinus. And the same cotemporary
and unexceptionable evidence adds the Saxons to
his list of devastators — "Picti, Saxonesque, et
Scoti, et Attacotti Britannos serumnis vexavere
continuis." Mark the word continuis.

The Alemanni of Britain are noticed by the
same writer in a passage which must be taken
along with the notice of the Alemanni under Eroc.
"Valentinian placed Fraomarius as king over the
Buccinobantes, a nation of the Alemanni, near
Mentz. Soon afterwards, however, an attack
upon his people devastated their country (pa-
gum, gau). H e was then translated to Britain,
and placed over the Alemanni, at that time
flourishing both in numbers and power, as
tribune."

We may now ask what foreign elements were
introduced into Britain by the Roman legions ;
since nothing is more certain than that the Ro-
man armies consisted, but in a small degree, of

ROMAN LEGIONARIES. 99

Romans. The Notitia* Utriusque Imperii helps
us here ; indeed it may be that it supplies us with
a complete list of the imperial forces in all their
ethnological heterogeneousness. Some of the
titles of the regiments and companies (alee, nu-
meri, cohortes) are unexplained : several, how-
ever, are taken from the country of the soldiers
that composed them.

The list gives us settlers in Britain of Ger-
manic, Gallic, Iberic, Slavonic, Aramaic, and
Berber extraction.

GERMANS.

Tungricani. — Either soldiers who had distin-
guished themselves in the parts about Tongres, or
true Tungrian Germans, under a Prsepositus, and
stationed at Dubris (Dover).

Tungri. — True Tungrian Germans. At Borco-
vicum. A cohort.

Tumacenses. — Either soldiers who had distin-
guished themselves in the parts about Tournay, or
true Tournay Germans, under a Propositus, and
stationed at Lemanus (Lyrnne).

Batavians. — A cohort stationed at Procolitia.

GAULS.

Nervii. — A numerous cohort under a Prefect at
Dictum.

* Referred to some time between the reigns of Valens and
Honorius.

100 ROMAN LEGIONARIES.

Nervii. — A cohort at Aliona.

Nervii. — A cohort at Virosidum. How far these
were Gauls, or, if Gauls, of unmixed blood, is un-
certain. During the wars of Csesar, the brave
nation of the Nervians was said to have been ex-
terminated. Such was not the case. Portions of
it remained. At the same time, the reduction was
so great, and the subsequent influx of Germans
from the Lower Rhine was so considerable, that
the soldiers in question were, probably, as much
Roman and German as Gallic.

Morini. — Gauls from the parts about Calais.
A cohort, stationed at Glannobanta.

Galli. — A cohort at Vendolana.

IBERIANS.

Hispani. — A cohort. Stationed at Axellodu-
num.

SLAVONIANS.

Dalmatw. — Cavalry. Stationed at Brannodu-
num.

Dalmatce. — A cohort, at Prsesidum.

Dalmatce. — A cohort, at Magna.

Bad. — A cohort, at Amboglanna.

Thraces.^-A cohort, at Gabrosentum.

Thaifal (?) — Cavalry. Perhaps German, but
more probably Slavonians, infamous for the tur-
pitude of their habits.

ROMAN LEGIONARIES. 101

ARAMAEANS.
Syri. — Cavalry.

BERBERS.

Mauri. — Under a Prefect, at Aballaba.

If we ask what proportion these foreign and
miscellaneous elements in the Roman Legions
of Britain bore to the true Romans, we wait in
vain for an answer. This is because the con-
stitution of the other portions of the army is
unknown. Who (for instance) composed the
Fortenses, the Stablesiani, the Abulci, and. nu-
merous other companies. Perhaps, Romans ; in
which case the proportion of Syrian, Slavonian,
and other non-Roman elements is diminished.
Perhaps, Syrians, Slavonians, or Germans; in
which case it is increased ? That the above-named
troops, however, belonged to the ethnological divi-
sions which are denoted by the names, is in the
highest degree probable. It is also probable that
the list may be increased; thus the Pacenses,
the Asti, the Frixagori, and the Lergi, although
there are doubts, in every case, about the read-
ing, and still greater about the signification, have
reasonably been thought to have been regiments,
or companies, named from the localities where
they were levied; but, as already stated, these
localities are doubtful.

As blood foreign to both the British and Ro-
man was introduced into Britain, so was British

102 ROMAN LEGIONARIES.

blood introduced elsewhere. All the foreign
stations of the British troops are not known;
but that there was, at least, one in each of the
following countries is certain — Illyricum, Egypt,
Northern Africa. The history of foreign blood
in Britain, and of British blood in foreign coun-
tries are counterpart questions.

The lines of Roman road are the best data for
ascertaining the parts of our island where the
mixture of Roman and foreign blood was great-
est : since it is a fair inference that those districts
which were the least accessible were the most
Keltic. These are North Wales, Cornwall and
Devonshire, the Wealds of Sussex and Kent, Lin-
colnshire, and the district of Craven. On the
other hand, the pre-eminently Roman tracts
are —

1. The valleys of the Tyne and Sol way, or the
line of the wall and rampart which divided South
Britain from North.

2. The valley of the Ouse, or the parts about
York.

3. 4. The valleys of the Thames and Severn.

5. Cheshire and South Lancashire.

6. Norfolk and Suffolk.

The Roman blood, then, in Britain seems to
have been inconsiderable, even when we class as
Roman everything which was other than British.
That the language, however, was chiefly Latin —

EOMAN LEGIONARIES. 103

more or less modified — is what we infer from the
analogies of Gaul and Spain. The history, too,
of four centuries of civilization and corruption is
Roman also. That there was a bodily evacuation
of Britain by the Romans, a concealment of trea-
sures, and a migration to Gaul, rests upon no
authority earlier than that of the Anglo-Saxon
writers, some five centuries later. The country was
rather a theatre for usurpers and rebels ; none of
whom can be shewed to have either left the
island, or to have been exterminated by the
Anglo-Saxon invasion — an invasion to which, in
a future chapter, an earlier date, and a more gra-
dual operation than is usually assigned will be
attributed.

104

VALUE OF

CHAPTER VII.

VALUE OF THE EAKLY BRITISH RECORDS. — TRUE AND GENUINE

TRADITIONS RARE. — GILDAS. — BEDA. NENNIUS. — ANNALES CAM-

BRENSES. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CHRONICLES AND REGISTERS.

- -ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE. IRISH ANNALS. — VALUE OF THE

ACCOUNTS OF THE FIFTH AND SIXTH CENTURIES. — QUESTIONS
TO WHICH THEY APPLY.

Not one word has hitherto been said about the
early traditions of either Briton or Gael. No
word, either, about their early records. Nothing
about the Triads, Aneurin, Taliessin, Llywarch
Hen, and Merlin on the side of the Welsh; no-
thing about the Milesian and other legends of the
Irish. Why this silence? Have the preceding
investigations been so superabundantly clear as
to lead us to dispense with all rays of light ex-
cept those of the most unexceptionable kind?

It is an unusual piece of good fortune when
this happens anywhere ; and assuredly it has not
happened on British or Irish ground as yet. Or has
the evidence of such early records and traditions
been incompatible with the doctrines of the pre-
vious chapters, and, on the strength of its incon-
venience, been kept back? If so, there has been a
foul piece of disingenuousness on the part of the
writer But he does not plead guilty to this He

EARLY EECORDS. 105

attaches but little weight to the evidence of the
early British records; and the contents of the
present chapter are intended to justify his depre-
ciation of them.

The writer who asserts that the oldest work in
any language is of such antiquity as to be separ-
ated from the next oldest by any very long inter-
val— by an interval which leaves a wide chasm
between the first and second specimens of the
literature which no fragments and no traces of
any lost compositions are found to fill up — makes
an assertion which he is bound to support by
evidence of the most cogent kind. For it is not
always enough to shew that no intrinsic objec-
tions lie against the antiquity of the work in
question. It may be so short, or so general in
respect to its subject as to leave no room for con-
tradictory and impossible sentences or expres-
sions. It is not enough to shew that there were
no reasons against such a literature being deve-
loped ; since it is difficult to say what condi-
tions absolutely forbid the production of a work
stamped by no very definite characteristics. Nor
yet will it suffice to say that the preservation of
such a work is probable. All that can be got
from all this is a presumption in its favour. The
great fact of a work existing without giving this
impulse to the production of others like it, and
the fact of the same means of preservation being

106

VALUE OF

wholly neglected in other instances, still stand
over. They are not conclusive against certain
positions ; but they are circumstances which must
be fairly met ; circumstances which if one writer
overlook, others will not; circumstances which
the critic will insist on ; and circumstances
which, if the dazzle of a paradox, or the appeal to
the innate and universal sympathy for antiquity
keep them in the back ground for a while, will,
sooner or later, rise against the author who over-
looked them.

Neither are arguments from the antiquity of
language conclusive. When two works differ
from each other in respect to the signs of anti-
quity exhibited in their phraseology, the infer-
ence that the oldest in point of speech is propor-
tionably old in point of time is not the only one.
It is an easy thing to say that in the Latin lite-
rature the language of Ennius represents a date
a hundred years earlier than that of Cicero, and
that of Cicero a date 400 earlier than the time of
Boethius, and that when we meet elsewhere com-
positions which differ from each other as the
Latin of Ennius does from that of Boethius, there
is 500 years difference between them. It is by
no means certain that any two languages alter
at the same rate.

But an average may be struck, and it may be
said that greater antiquity of expression is primd

EARLY RECORDS. 107

facie evidence of a greater antiquity of date. It
is : but is only so when we are quite sure that
the dialects of the two specimens are the same.
There are works printed this very year in Ice-
land which, if there dates were unknown, would
pass for being a hundred years older than the
Swedish of the eleventh century.

It is only when the supporter of the authen-
ticity of a work of singular and unique antiquity
can begin with an epoch of comparatively recent
date, and argue backwards through a series of
continuous works, each older than the other, to
one still older than any, that he can reasonably
accuse the critic who demurs to his deductions
of captiousness. In this way the antiquity of
the oldest Chinese annals is invalidated : in this
way the date of the Indian Vedas (1400 B.C.).
But the great classical literatures stand the test,
and from the present time to Claudian, from
Claudian to Ennius, and from Ennius to Archi-
lochus we trace a classical literature with
all its works in continuity ; each pointing to
some one older than itself Even this forbids
an excessive antiquity to Homer.

Again — the likelihood of forgery must be con-
tinually kept in mind ; so much so, that even in
the unexceptionable literature of the classics, if
it could be shewn that any age between the pre-
sent and the eighth century B.C., were an age in

108 VALUE OF

which the Greek drama, the Greek epics, the Greek
histories, or the Greek orations could be forged,
a great deal would be subtracted from the proofs
of their antiquity. I do not say that it would
set them aside ; because everything of this kind is
a question of degree ; but the argument in their
favour would be less exceptionable than it is.

For it cannot be too strongly urged that the
preservation of records of high antiquity, in and
of itself, is naturally and essentially improbable.
More than half of the antiquities of the world
have been lost ; and this alone gives us the odds
against an instance of survivorship. This has
been insisted on by more than one archaeologist
— more cautious and candid than the majority
of his brotherhood. Whoever doubts this should
look around him. How few nations have a lite-
rature ! How thoroughly is the non-development
of a permanent literature the exception rather
than the rule ! And, even when records come
into existence, how numerous are the chances
against their preservation. Destruction is the
common law : continuance a happy rarity. For
extraordinary phenomena we must have extra-
ordinar}' proofs.

From the present time to the eleventh cen-
tury we may trace the native Welsh literature
continuously ; but no farther. If any thing be
older than the laws of Hoel Dhu, they must be

EAELY RECORDS. 109

so by four centuries, with nothing in the inter-
val. This is the measure of the value of Welsh
evidence to the events of the fifth century.
Writers, however, in Latin existed earlier. Still,
this is unsufficient to be conclusive to the vali-
dity of a fact in the fourth. Such a statement
must be tested by its own intrinsic probability.
It cannot come before us invested with the dig-
nity of a historically authenticated event. What
this is will soon appear.

If this be the spirit in which we must scru-
tinize documentary evidence, with what eyes
must we look upon traditions — traditions where-
in the record, instead of being permanently re-
gistered, is transmitted from mouth to mouth,
from father to son, from the old man to the
young, from generation to generation ? The
mere etymological import of the word will mis-
lead us. It is not enough for a thing to have
been handed down from father to son. A relic
may be so transmitted ; indeed, written papers
and printed books are traditions of this kind.
Heirlooms of any sort — whether belonging to
a nation or an individual — are such traditions as
these.

In a true tradition we must consider the form
and the origin. A narrative which has taken a
definite shape, either as a formula or a poem,
can scarcely be called a tradition. It is a speci-

110 VALUE OF

men of composition handed down by tradition,
but not a tradition itself. It is an unwritten
record — as much a record in form and nature
as a written document, but differing from a
written document in the manner of its trans-
mission to posterity. Many a good judge be-
lieves that the Homeric poems are older than
the art of writing, and, consequently, that they
were handed down to posterity orally. Yet no
one would say that the Iliad and Odyssey were
Greek traditions.

The fact of a narrative having taken a per-
manent form, inasmuch as that permanent form
both facilitates its transmission, and ensures its
integrity, distinguishes an unwritten record from
a tradition.

A true account of a real event transmitted from
father to son in no set form of words, but told in
a way that a nursery tale is told to children, or
the way in which a piece of evidence is given in a
court of justice, constitutes a tradition; for in this
form only is it liable to those elements of uncer-
tainty which distinguish tradition from history —
elements which we must recognize, if we wish to
be precise in our language,

Such is its form, or rather its want of form.
But this is not enough. A tradition, to be any-
thing at all, must have a basis in fact, and repre-
sent a real action, either accurately described or

EARLY RECORDS. Ill

but moderately misrepresented. I say moderately
misrepresented, because the absolute transmission
of anything beyond a mere list of names, and
dates, without addition, omission, or embellish-
ment, is a practical impossibility. Hence we must
allow for some inaccuracy ; just as in mechanics
we must allow for friction. But, allowing for
this, we must still remember that the event and
the account of it, are correlative terms. An
opinion — an account of an account — only takes
the appearance of a tradition. It is a tradition
so far as it is handed, down to posterity, but it
is no tradition with corresponding facts as a basis.
.It is generally a theory — a theory, perhaps un-
consciously formed, but still a theory. Certain
phenomena, of which there is no historical expla-
nation, excite the notice of some one less incu-
rious than his fellows, and he attempts to account
for them. On the two opposite coasts of a sea —
for instance — two populations with the same
manners and language, are observed to reside.
A migration will account for this; and, conse-
quently, a migration is assumed. The view, being
reasonable, is generally adopted ; and the fact of a
migration having absolutely taken place becomes
the current belief. The men who speak of this
in the fourth or fifth generation, speak of it as an
actual occurrence. So, perhaps, it is. But it is no
tradition notwithstanding; since the record can-

112

VALUE OF

not be traced up to the event. All that posterity
has had handed-down from its ancestors, is an
inference; which, even if it be as good as the his-
torical account of an absolute event (as it some-
times is), is anything but a tradition in the strict
sense of the term. Of course, the existence of
the inference itself can be reduced to a fact, and,
as such, produce a tradition. But this is not
the tradition which is wanted — not the tradition
which gives the fact in question.

These ex post facto traditions may be of any
amount of value, or of any degree of worth-
lessness. They may be inferences of such accu-
racy and justice as to command the respect of
the most critical ; or they may involve impossi-
bilities. The extremes are the best ; the former
for their intrinsic value, the latter from their
unlikelihood to mislead. The most dangerous
are the intermediate. Possibly, plausible, or, at
any rate, without any outward and visible marks
of condemnation —

" They lie like truth, and yet most truly lie."

What proportion do these ex post facto tradi-
tions bear to the true ones ? This is difficult to
say. A nickname, a genealogy, a tune may well
be transmitted by tradition. So may charms,
formulae, proverbs, and poems ; yet when we
come to proverbs and poems we are on the do-

INFERENCE AND EVIDENCE. 113

main of unwritten literature, a domain which
can scarcely be identified with that of tradition.
A local legend, when it is not too suspiciously
adapted to the features of the place to which
it applies, may also be admitted as traditional.
These and but little beyond. Men rarely think
about transmitting narratives until it is too late
for an authentic account.

On the other hand, the very mental activity
which employs itself upon the attempt to ac-
count for an unexplained phenomenon is a sign
of attention ; and where there is the attention
to speculate, there is likely to be the desire to
transmit. If so, it is probable that the propor-
tion of transmitted speculations to true tradi-
tions is immeasurably large. But there is an
other reason for ignoring the so-called traditions.
When there is a tradition, and a true histori-
cal record as well, the tradition is superfluous.
When a tradition stands alone, there is nothing
to confirm it. What can we do then? To assume
the fact from the truth of the tradition, and the
truth of the tradition from the existence of the
fact, is to argue in a circle. Two independent
traditions, however, may confirm each other.
When this happens the case is improved ; but,
even then, they may be but similar inferences
from the same premises.

If, then, I allow no inference which I feel my-

114 INFERENCE AND EVIDENCE.

self justified in drawing to be disturbed by any
so-called tradition ; and, if instead of seeing in
the accounts of our early writers a narrative
transmitted by word of mouth in lieu of a re-
cord registered in writing, I deal with such ap-
parent narratives as if they were the inferences
of some later chronicler, I must not be accused
of undue presumption. The statements will still
be treated with respect, the more so, perhaps,
because they rest on induction rather than tes-
timony; and, as a general rule, they will be cre-
dited with the merit of being founded on just
premises, even where those premises do not
appear. In other words, every writer will be
thought logical until there are reasons for sus-
pecting the contrary. For a true and genuine
tradition, however, I have so long sought in vain,
that I despair of ever finding one. If found, it
would be duly appreciated. On the other hand,
by treating their counterfeits as inferences, we
improve our position as investigators. A fact
we must take as it is told us, and take it with-
out any opportunity of correction — all or none ;
whereas, an inference can be scrutinized and
amended. In the one case we receive instruc
tions from which we are forbidden to deviate
in the other we act as judges, with a power t
pronounce decisions. Nor does it unfrequently
happen that our position in this respect is better

INFERENCE AND EVIDENCE. 115

than that of the original writer ; since, however,
many may be the facts which he may have had
for his opinion beyond those which he has trans-
mitted to posterity, there are others of which he
must have been ignorant, and with which we
are familiar. Changing the expression, where
there is anything like an equality of data, the
means of using them is in favour of the later
inquirer as against the earlier; in which case he
understands antiquity better than the ancients —
presumptuous as the doctrine may be. With a
bond fide piece of testimony, however tradition-
ary, documentary, or cotemporaneous, the case
is reversed, and the modern writer must listen
to his senior with thankful deference. And this
it is that makes the distinction between infer-
ence and evidence so important. To mistake the
former for the latter is to overvalue antiquity
and exclude ourselves from a legitimate and fer-
tile field of research. To confound the latter
with the former, is to raise ourselves into criti-
cism when our business is simply to interpret.

Proceeding to details, we find that the His-
toria GildcB and the Epistola Gildo3 are the two
earliest works upon Anglo-Saxon Britain. For
reasons which will soon appear, these works are
referred to A.D. 550. The class of facts for which
the evidence of a writer of this date is wanted,
is that which contains the particulars of the

116 GILD AS.

history of Britain during the last days of the
Roman, and the beginning of the Anglo-Saxon
domination. Amongst these, the more import-
ant would be the rebellion of Maximus, the Pict
and Scot inroads, the earliest Germanic invasions,
and the subordination of the Romans to the
Saxons. But all these are deeds of devastation,
and, as | such, unfavourable to even the existence
of the scanty literature necessary to record them.
Again, there were two other changes, equally un-
favourable to the preservation of records, going
on. Pagan or Classical literature was becoming
Christian or Medieval, whilst the Latin or Roman
style was passing into Byzantine and Greek.
Ammianus Marcellinus, the last of the Latin
Pagan historians, was cotemporary with the
events at the beginning of the period in ques-
tion. Procopius, one of the last Pagan writers
of Byzantium, died about the same time as
Gildas.

Hence, the 150 years — from A.D. 400 to 550
for which alone the history of Gildas is wanted,
is an era of excessive obscurity. Are the merit;
of the author proportionate? Is the light he
brings commensurate with the darkness ? What
could he know? What does be tell? He tell
so little that the question as to the value of his
authorities is reduced to nearly nothing; and, o
that little which we learn from his wordy and

GILD AS. 117

turgid pages, the smallest fraction only is of any
ethnological interest. Indeed, Gildas is most
worth notice for what he leaves unsaid. The re-
bellion of Maximus he mentions; but he is not
answerable for the migration from Britain to
Brittany, on which (as already stated) so much
turns. The Saxons, too, he mentions, and the
name of Vortigern — but he is not answerable for
the derivation of the name from the word Sahs=
dagger. In regard to the important question as
to the date of the invasion, and the number of
the invaders, he fixes 150 years before his own
time, and gives three as the number of their ves-
sels (cyulce). Aurelius Ambrosius and the Pugna
Badonica are especially alluded to, the date of
the latter event being the date of his own birth.
As this is an event which he might have known
from his parents, and as the later Roman writers
are our authorities until (there or thereabouts)
the death of Honorius, it remains to inquire
upon what testimonies Gildas gave the few events
which he notices between the years 417* and
5] 6. Is there anything which by suggesting the
existence of native cotemporary documents should
induce us to consider his evidence as conclusive?
I think not. Such may or may not have existed,

* This is the year in which Orosius concludes his history. It
leaves, as near as may be, a century between the last of the
Roman informants and the birth of the earliest British.

118 GILD AS.

the presumption being for or against them, ac-
cording to the view which the inquirer takes
respecting the literary and civilizational influ-
ences of the expiring Paganism of the Romans,
and the incipient Christianity of the early British
Church, combined with the antiquity of the ear-
liest British and Irish records — a wide and com-
plex subject, if treated generally, but if viewed
with reference to the specific case before us (the
authorities of Gildas), a narrow one.

In the case of Gildas it is perfectly unnecessary
to assume anything of the kind. The only ma-
terial facts which he gives us are the letter to
^Etius for assistance, and a notice of the place
which Vortigern finds in the downfall of the
Romano-British empire. The first of these points
to Rome rather than to Britain; the second is
from the life of a Gallic missionary — St. Germa-
nus of Auxerre. To this may be added the high
probability of Gildas' work having been written
in Gaul ; a fact which, undoubtedly, subtracts
from the little value it might otherwise possess.

The next is an author of a very different ca-
libre, the venerable Beda; concerning whom we
must remember that he stands in contrast to
Gildas from being Anglo-Saxon rather than Bri-
tish. Now, his history is Ecclesiastical and not
Civil ; so that ethnological questions make no part
of his inquiries, and, as far as they are treated

BED A. 119

at all, they are treated incidentally. Whatever
may have been the records of the Romano-British
Church, or the compositions of Romano-British
writers, they form no part of the materials of
Beda. The most he says that, from writings and
traditions along with the information derived
from the monks of the Abbey of Lestingham, he
wrote that part of his work which gives an ac-
count of the Christianity of the kingdom of
Mercia For the other parts of the kingdom he
chiefly applied to the Bishop of the Diocese; to
Albinus for the antiquities of Kent and Essex;
and to Daniel for those of Wessex, the Isle of
Wight, and Sussex. For Lincolnshire he had
viva voce information from Cynebert, and the
monks of the Abbey of Partney ; and for North-
umberland he made his inquiries himself. Now
as Christianity was first introduced into Anglo-
Saxon England by Augustine, A.D. 597, the era of
the Germanic invasions lies beyond the evidence
of either Beda or his authorities. Gildas, and the
sources of Gildas he knew; but of access to na-
tive records of the fifth century — the century for
which they are most wanted — or of the existence
of such, no trace occurs in the Historia Ecclesias-
tica, except in the two doubtful cases which will
appear in the sequel.*

In Nennius, more than in any other writer, do

* The origin of the Picts and Scots.

1 20 NENNIUS.

we find it necessary to assume the existence of
any previous historians, upon whose authority the
facts of the times between the cessation of the
Roman supremacy, and the consolidation of the
Anglo-Saxon power may be received ; and in
Nennius we must, for many reasons, admit it.
In the first place, he mentions more than one cir-
cumstance which he could not well have got from
any other source ; in the next, the preface says
that what has been done has been done " partim
majorum traditionibus ; partem scriptis; partim
etiam monumentis veterum Britannise incolarum ;
partim et de annalibus Romanorum. Insuper
et de chronicis sanctorum Patrum, Ysidori, scilicet
Hieronymi, Prosperi, Eusebii, necnon et de his-
toriis Scotorum Saxonumque, inimicorum licet,
non ut volui, sed ut potui, meorum obtemperans
jussionibus seniorum, unam hanc historiunculam
undecunque collectam balbutiendo coacervari."
But, it should be added that the authenticity of
the preface is doubtful.

Nennius, then, most introduces the question as
to the value of the narratives of the events of the
fifth century. I cannot but put it exceedingly
low. Of any historian, properly so called, there
is not a trace. Neither is there of regular annals,
a point which will soon be considered more fully.
Nor yet of any of even the humbler forms of
narrative poetry ; though this is a point upon

NENNIU& 121

which I speak with hesitation. I base my opinion,
however, upon the notices of the two chief epochs
— that of Vorfeern and that of Kinor Arthur.

O O

The first is from the life of St. Germanus, the
second is an unadorned enumeration of three
campaigns, with as little of the appearance of
being derived from a poetic source as is possible.

Several genealogies occur in Nennius; and it
often happens that genealogies are useful ele-
ments of criticism. British ethnology, however,
is not the department in which their value is
most conspicuous.

How far were the traditions of Nennius of any
worth? The following is a specimen of them.
"The Britons were named after Brutus; Brutus
was the son of Hisicion, Hisicion of Alanus, Al-
anus of Rea Silvia, Rea Silvia of Numa, Numa of
Pamphilus, Pamphilus of Ascanius, Ascanius of
zEneas, zEneas of Anchises, Anchises of Tros, Tros
of Dardanus, the son of Flire, the son of Javan,
the son of Japhet. This Japhet had seven sons ;
the first Gomer, from whom came the Gauls ; the
second Magog, from whom came the Scythians
and Goths; the third Aialan, from whom came
the Medes ; the fourth Javan, whence the Greeks ;
the fifth Tubal, whence the Hebrews ; the sixth
Mesech, whence the Cappadocians ; the seventh
Troias, whence the Thracians. These are the sons
of Japhet, the son of Noah, the son of Lamech.

122 NENNIUS.

I will now return to the point whence I de-
parted.

The first man of the race of Japhet came to
Europe, Alanus by name, with his three sons.
Their names were Ysicion, Armenon, and Neguo.
Ysicion had four sons, their names were Frank,
Roman, Alemann, and Briton, from whom Britain
was first inhabited. But Armenon had five sons.
These are Goth, Walagoth, Cebid, Burgundian,
Longobard. Neguo had four sons, Wandal, Saxon,
Bogar, Turk. From Hisicio the first-born of Alan,
arose four natives, the Franks, the Latins, the
Alemanns, and the Britons. From Armenon, the
second son of Alan, came the Goths, the Vandals,
the Cebidi, and the Longobards. From Neguo,
the third, the Bogars, Vandals, Saxons, and Ta-
rincL But these nations were subdivided over all
Europe. Alanius, however, as they say, was the
son of Sethevir, the son of Ogomnum, the son of
Thois, the son of Boib, the son of Simeon, the
son of Mair, the son of Ethac, the son of Luothar,
the son of Ecthel, the son of Oothz, the son of
Aborth, the son of Ra, the son of Esra, the son of
Israu, the son of Barth, the son of Jonas, the son
of Jabath, the son of Japhet, the son of Noah, the
son of Lamech, the son of Methusalem, the son of
Enoch, the son of Jareth, the son of Malalel, the
son of Cainan, the son of Enos, the son of Seth,
the son of Adam, the son of the living God/'

AXNALES CAMBRLE. 123

Surely this is but a piece of book-learning spoilt
in the application. Yet what says the author?

" This genealogy I found in the traditions of
the ancients, who were the inhabitants of Britain
in the earliest times/' — Historia Britonum, cap.
xiii.

The next two works are chronicles, so-called ;
one British and one Anglo-Saxon ; the Annates
Cambria? and the Saxon Chronicle.

The notices of the Annates Cambria? are re-
markably brief and scanty. It has scarcely one
for every second year, and what it has is short
and unimportant.

It begins with A.D. 447, and ends with the
Norman Conquest. It is closely confined to the
events of Wales.

The date and authorship are uncertain. Of
the three MSS. which supply the text, one is
said to be as old as A.D. 954

When the entries began to be cotemporary
with the events registered is uncertain ; indeed,
there is no proof that they are so anywhere. On
the other hand, they cannot be earlier than A.D.
521, since the event registered there is the birth
of St. Columba. Now the entry of the birth of
an illustrious personage is not likely to be a
cotemporaueous entry ; since his greatness has
yet to be achieved, and it is only the spirit of
prophecy and anticipation that such a record

124 • ANNALES CAMBRLE.

would be made at the time he merely came into
the world.

The year 522, then, is the earliest possible co-
temporary entry, and this is, most likely, much
too early.

But the work has not the appearance of being
a register of cotemporaneous events at all. In
such a composition the idlest chronicler would
find something to say under each year, and notices
of either local events, or the great events of
general interest, could scarcely fail to be entered.
No one, however, will say that such a series of
entries as the following from A.D. 501 to A.D. 601,
can ever have constituted cotemporary history.

LVII. Annus. Episcopus Ebur pausat in
Christo, anno cccl. setatis suae.

LVIII. Annus.

LXXI. Annus.

LXXII. Annus. Bellum Badonis in quo
Arthur portavit crucem Domini nostri Jesu
Christi tribus diebus et tribus noctibus in hume-
ros suos, et Brittones victores fuerunt.

LXXIII. Annus.

LXXVI. Annus.

LXXVIL Annus. Sanctus Columcille nasci-
tur. Quies Sanctse Brigidse.

LXXVIL Annus.

XCII. Annus.

XCIIL Annus. Gueith Camlann, in qua

ANN ALES CAMBRLE. 125

Arthur et Medraut corruere ; et mortalitas in
Brittannia et Hibernia fait.

XCLIV. Annus.

XCIX. Annus.

C. Annus. Dormitatio Ciarani.

CI. Annus.

CII. Annus.

CIII. Annus. Mortalitas magna, in qua
pausat Mailcun rex Genedotse.

CIV. Annus.

CXIII. Annus.

CXIY. Annus. Gabran filius Dungart moritur.

CXV. Annus.

CXVII. Annus.

CXVIII. Annus. Columcille in Brittania
exiit.

CXIX. Annus.

CXX. Annus.

CXXI. Annus. [Navigatio Gil das in Hibernia,]

CXXII. Annus.

CXXIV. Annus.

CXXV. Annus. [Synodus Victorias apud Bri-
tones congregatur.]

CXXVI. Annus Gildas obiit.

CXXVII. Annus.

CXXVIII. Annus.

CXXIX. Bellum Armterid. [Inter filios Elifer
et Guendoleu, filium Keidiau, in quo bello Guen-
doleu cecidet ; Merlinus insanus effectus est.]

126 ANNALES CAMBKI.E.

CXXX. Annus. Brendan Byror dormitatio.

CXXXI. Annus.

CXXXV. Annus.

CXXXVI. Annus. Guurci et Peretur [filii
Elifer] moritur.

CXXXVII. Annus.

CXXXIX. Annus.

CXL. Annus. Bellum contra Euboniam, et
dispositio Danielis Banchorum.

CXLI. Annus.

CXLIV. Annus.

CXLV. Annus. Conversio Constantini ad
Dominum.

CXLVI. Annus.

GXLIX. Annus.

CL. Annus. [Edilbertus in Anglia rexit.]

CLI. Annus. Columcille moritur. Dunaut
rex moritur. Agustinus Mellitus Anglos ad
Christum convertit.

CLII. Annus.

CXLIX. Annus.

CLVII. Annus. Synodus Urbis Legion. Gre-
gorius obiit in Cliristo. David Episcopus Moni
judeorum.

The notices between the brackets are not found
in the Harleian MS. — one of three.

The years are counted from the commencement
of the Annals, which, from circumstances inde-
pendent of the text, is fixed AD. 444. Hence,

ANN ALES CAMBRIA. 127

lvii and clvii, coincide with AD. 501, and A.D. 601,
respectively. It is not until the last quarter of
the tenth century that the entries notably improve
in fulness and frequency; during which period
the table was probably composed, — the earlier
dates being put down not because they were of
either local or general importance, but because
they were known to the writer. Such, at least,
is the inference from the style. Lives of Saints
may have furnished them all. They agree more
or less with the Irish Annals, and, probably, are
to a great extent taken from the same sources.

The Annates Cambrenses contain few or no
facts directly bearing upon the ethnology of Great
Britain, except so far as the existence of a lite-
rary composition, of a given antiquity, is the
measure of the civilization of the country to
which it belongs.

One of its entries, however, has an indirect
bearing. The value of Gildas depends upon the
time at which he wrote. We have already seen
that a small piece of autobiography in his his-
tory tells us that he was born in the year of the
Bellum Badonicum. Now the date of this is
got from the Annales Cambrenses, A.D. 516.
There is no reason to believe it other than ac-
curate.

It were well if such a composition as the
Annales Cambria} were called (what it really is)

128

ANNALES CAMBRIA.

a list of dates ; since the word chronicle has a
dangerous tendency to engender a very uncritical
laxity of thought. It continually gets mistaken
for a register ; yet the two sorts of composition
are wholly different. That the habit of making
cotemporaneous entries of events as they happen,
just as incumbents of parishes, each in his order
of succession, enter the births, deaths, and mar-
riages of their parishioners, should exist in such
institutions as religious monasteries or civil guild-
halls, is by no means unlikely. But, then, on
the other hand, there is an equal likelihood of
nothing of the sort being attempted. Hence,
when a work reaches posterity in the shape of
a chronicle or annals, its antiquity and value
must be judged on its own merits, rather than
according to any preconceived opinions.

In mechanics nothing is stronger than its
weakest part, and it would be well if a similar
apothegm could be extended to the criticism of
such compositions as the Annales Cambriae, and
the Saxon Chronicle. It would be well if we
could say that in chronological tables nothing
was earlier than the latest entry. In common
histories we do this. The common historian is
always supposed to have composed Iris work sub-
sequent to the date of the latest event contained
in it — a few exceptions only being made for
those authors whose works treat of cotemporary

THE SAXON CHRONICLE. 129

actions. So it is with the annalist whose Annals,
more ambitious in form than the bare chronicle,
emulate, like those of the great Roman historian,
the style of history. But it is not so when the
notices pass a certain limit, and become short
and scanty. They then suggest a comparison
with the parish register, or the Olympic records,
and change then character altogether. No longer
mere chronological works, emanating from the
pen of a single author, and referrible to some
single generation, subsequent, in general, to a
majority of the events set down in them, they
are the productions of a series of writers, each
of whom is a registrar of cotemporary events.
By this an undue value attaches itself to works
which have nothing in common with the regis-
ter but the form.

Now, if genuine traditions are scarce, real re-
gisters are scarcer. In both cases, however, the
false wears the garb of the true, and, in both
cases, writers shew an equal repugnance to scru-
tiny. This is to be regretted ; since with nine
out of ten of the chronicles that have come down
to us, it is far more certain that their latest facts
are earlier in date than the author who records
them, than that the earliest possible author can
have been cotemporary with the first recorded
events. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle may illus-
trate this. It ends in the reign of Stephen ; yet

K

130 THE SAXON CHRONICLE.

the writer of even the last page may have been
anything but a cotemporary with the events it
embodies. It begins with the invasion of Julius
Caesar. A cotemporary entry — the essential ele-
ment of registration — is out of the question here.

The general rule with compositions of the kind
in question is, that they fall into two parts, the
first of which cannot be of equal antiquity with
the events recorded, the second of which may be ;
and we are only too fortunate when satisfactory
proofs of cotemporary composition enable us to
convert the possible into the probable, the pro-
bable into the certain — the may into the must.
Even when this is the case, the proportions of
the cotemporary to the non-cotemporary state-
ments are generally uncertain — a question of
more or less, that must be settled by the exami-
nation of the particular composition under con-
sideration.

Whatever may be the other merits of the An-
nates Cambria}, it has no claim to the title of a
register during the sixth century — and, a fortiori
none during the fifth.

Neither has the Saxon Chronicle. We infei
this from the extent to which it follows Bed?
We infer it, too, still more certainly from th<
following passage — a passage which, if made ii
the year under which it is found, would be ik
record but a prophecy.

THE SAXON CHRONICLE. 131

A.D. 595. — "This year iEthelbriht succeeded to
the kingdom of the Kentish men, and held it
fifty-three years. In his days the Holy Pope
Gregory sent us baptism. That was in the two-
and-thirtieth year of his reign ; and Columba, a
mass-priest, came to the Picts and converted them
to the faith of Christ. They are dwellers by the
northern mountains. And their king gave him
the island which is called Hi. Therein are fine
hides of land, as men say. There Columba built
a monastery, and he was abbot there thirty-two
years, and there he died when he was seventy-
seven years old. His successors still have the
place. The Southern Picts had been baptized
long before ; Bishop Ninias, who had been in-
structed at Rome, had preached baptism to them,
whose church and monastery is at Hwithern,
hallowed in the name of St. Martin ; there he
resteth with many holy men. Now, in Hi
there must ever be an abbot and not a bishop ;
and all the Scottish bishops ought to be sub-
ject to him, because Columba was an abbot, not
a bishop."

Similar notices, impossible, without a vast
amount of gratuitous assumption, to be con-
sidered cotemporaneous, are of frequent occur-
rence until long after the consolidation of the
Anglo-Saxon power in England ; but as the
events of the fifth and sixth centuries are the

132 IRISH ANNALS.

only events of ethnological importance, the notice
of them is limited.

The Welsh poems attributed to the bards of
the sixth and seventh centuries, contain no facts
that will make part of any of our reasonings in
the sequel. Their existence is, of course, a mea-
sure of the intellectual calibre of the time (what-
ever that may be) to which they refer. But this
is not before us now.

In respect to the value of the Irish annals, the
civil historian has a far longer list of problems
than the ethnologist ; since the latter wants their
testimony upon a few points only, e. g,, 1. The
origin of the proper Irish themselves ; 2. the
affinities of the Picts ; 3. the migration (real or
supposed) of the Scots. These, at least, are the
chief points. Others, of course, such as the de-
tails concerning the Danes, can be found ; but
the ones in question are the chief.

In respect to the first, whoever reads Dr. Prich-
ard's* account of the contents of the earliest
chronicles, consisting, amongst other matters, oi
an antediluvian Csesar ; a landing of ParthoL
nus with his wife Ealga, on the coast of Conn*
mara, twelve years after the Deluge, and on the
14th of May ; the colony of the Neimhidh, de
scendants of Gog and Magog ; the Fir-Bolg froi
the Thrace ; the Tuatha de Danann from Athens
* Vol. iii, pp. 140—147.

IRISH ANNALS. 133

and, above all, the famous Milesians, amongst
whom was Nial, the intimate of Moses and
Aaron, and the husband of Scota the daughter
of Pharaoh, will soon satisfy himself that, with
the exception of a little weight which may pos-
sibly be due to the prominence which the Spanish
Peninsula takes in the several legends, the whole
mass is so utterly barren in historical results,
that criticism would be misplaced.

But the Pict and Scot questions are in a dif-
ferent predicament. Like the Roman and Anglo-
Saxon conquests of Britain, the events connected
with them may have occurred within the Histori-
cal period — provided only that that period begin
early enough.

How far this may be the case with the Irish
annals is a reasonable question.

That any existing series of Irish annals ante
rior to the time of the earliest extant annalist,
Tigernach, who lived in the eleventh century, is
cotemporary with the events which it records,
so as to partake of the nature of a register, is
what no one has asserted; and hence their credit
rests upon that of such earlier records as may be
supposed to have served as their basis.

These may be poems, genealogies, or chronicles ;
all of which may be admitted to have existed.
How long? In a more or less imperfect form
from the introduction of Christianity. Is this the

134 IRISH ANNALS.

extreme limit in the way of antiquity? Pro-
bably; perhaps certainly. Out of all the numer-
ous pieces of verse quoted by the annalists, one
only carries us back to a Pagan period, and even
this is referred to a year subsequent to the intro-
duction of Christianity. An extract from the
annals of the Four Masters is as follows, a.d.
458, twenty-seven years after the first arrival of
St. Patrick "after Laogar, the son of Nial of the
Nine Hostages, had reigned in Ireland thirty
years, he was killed in the country of Caissi (?)
between Eri and Albyn, i. e., the two hills in the
country of the Faolain, and the Sun and Wind
killed him, for he violated them; whence the
poet sings —

" Laogar M'Nial died in Caissi the green land,
The elements of divine things, by the oath which he violated,
inflicted the doom of death on the king."

The genealogies are generally contained in the
poems.

As to annals partaking of the nature of regis-
ters the language of the extant compositions is
unfavourable. They are mentioned, of course ;
but it is always some one's collection of some-
thing before his time — never the original cotem-
porary documents. Now the compiler is Cormac
Mc Arthur, now St. Patrick. The manner of their
mention in the Four Masters is as follows : —

"A. D. 266 was the fortieth year of Cormac

IRISH ANNALS. 135

Mc Arthur McConn over the kingdom of Ireland,
until he died at Clete, after a salmon-bone had
stuck in his throat, from old prophecies which
Malgon the Druid had made against him, after
Cormac turned against the Druids on account of
his manner of adoring God without them. For
that reason the Devil (Diabul) tempted him
(Malgenn) through the instigation, until he caus-
ed his death. It was Cormac who composed the
precepts to be observed by kings, the manners,
tribute, and ordinations of kings. He was a wise
man in laws, and in things chronological and his-
torical, for it was he who invented the laws of the
judgments, and the right principles in all bar-
gains, also the tributes, so that there was a law
which bound all men even unto the present time.
This Cormac Mc Arthur was he who collected the
Chronicle of Ireland into one place, Tara, until he
formed from them the Chronicles of Ireland in
one book, which was called (afterwards) the Psal-
ter of Tara. In that book were the events and
synchronisms of the kings of Ireland with the
kings and emperors of the world, and of the
kings of the provinces with the kings of Ireland."
A work of this kind, possible enough in Alex-
andria, is surely in need of very definite and un-
exceptionable testimony to make it credible as
a piece of Irish history The truly historical fact
contained in the extract is the existence of a book,

136 IRISH ANNALS.

at the time of the Four Masters, with a Christian
title, and Pagan contents.

To assume anything beyond the existence of
early biographies of the early propagators of
Irish Christianity is unnecessary. These had an
undoubted existence; sometimes in prose, some-
times in verse ; and it is these that the annalists
themselves chiefly refer to ; the character of
whose notices may be collected from the follow-
ing extracts relating to the first arrival of St.
Patrick.

"A. D. 430. — The second year of Laogar. In this
year Pope Celestine first sent Palladius, the
bishop, to Ireland, to preach the faith to the
Irish, and there came with him twelve compa-
nions. Nathe, the son of Garchon, opposed him.
Going onwards, however, he baptized many in
Ireland ; and three churches, built of wood, were
built by him, the White Church, the House of
the Romans, and Domnach Arta (Dominica
Alia). In the "White Church he left his books,
and a desk with the relics of Paul, Peter, and
many other martyrs. He left, too, in the churches
after him these four, Augustinus, Benedictus,
Silvester, and Solonius, whilst Palladius was re-
turning to Rome, because he found not the
honour due to him, when disease seized him in
the country of the Picts (Cruithnech), and he
died there/' — Annals of the Four Masters.

IKISH ANNALS. 137

Again —

"A.D. 431. The fourth year of Laogar. Patrick
came to Ireland this }rear, and imparted baptism
and blessing to the Irish, men, women, sons, and
daughters, except those who were unwilling to
receive baptism or faith from him, as his life re-
lates (ut narrat ejus vita). The church of An-
trim was founded by Patrick, after its donation
from Feiim the son of Laogar, the son of Nial, to
him, to Loman, and to Fortchern. Flann of the
monastery has sung —

"Patrick, abbot of all Ireland, McCalphrain, McFotaide,
McDeisse, the withholder of testimony to falsehood, McCor-

mac Mor, McLeibriuth,
McOta, McOrric the Good, McMaurice, McLeo of the church,
McMaximua the Mournful, McEncret, the Noble, the Illus-
trious,
McPhilist the Best of All, McFeren the Blameless,
Mc Britain the Famous by Sea, whence the Britons strong

by sea,
Cochnias his mother the Noble, Nemthor his city, the War-
like ;
In Momonia his portion is not denied, which he acquired at
the prayers of Patrick."

In the Books of the Schools on Divine Things
the rest of this poem is to be found, i.e., De Mi-
rabilibus Familise Patricii Orationum."

The value due to a series of Lives of Saints
may be allowed to the Irish Annals subsequent
to A.D. 430; and isolated events, without much
reference to their importance, is what we get from

138 IRISH ANNALS.

them. As soon as Christianity introduces the
use of letters, we see our way to the preservation
of the records, and the dawning of history begins.

If the annals of the Christian period rest almost
wholly on Christian records, what can be the au-
thority of the still earlier histories. Separate sub-
stantive proof of the existence of early historians,
or early poets there is none. We only assume it
from the events narrated. We also assume the
event from the narrative ; and, so doing, argue
in a circle. The fact from the statement, and the
statement from the fact. Such is too often the
case.

An additional century of antiquity may be
gained by admitting the existence of an imper-
fect Christianity in Ireland anterior to the time
of St. Patrick — though the evidence to it is ques-
tionable. The annals anterior to A.D. 340 will
still stand over. They fall into two divisions ;
the impossible, or self-confuting, and the possible.
The latter extend over seven centuries from about
B.C. 308 to A.D. 430. The former go back to the
Creation, and are given up as untrustworthy by
the native annalists themselves.

The early annals of the class in question which
give us possible events, if they existed at all, must
have been in Irish. They must also have been
more or less known to King Cormac Mc Arthur.
They imply, too, the use of an alphabet. St. Pa-

IRISH ANXALS. 139

trick, too, must have known them ; as is implied
by the following extract : —
a.d. " The tenth year of Laogar. The history
438- and laws of Ireland purified and written
out from old collections, and from the old books
of Ireland which were brought together to one
place at the asking of St. Patrick. These are the
nine wise authors who did this. Laogar, King of
Ireland, Corcc, and Daire, three kings; Patrick,
Benin, Benignus (Benin), and Carnech, three
Saints ; Ros, Dubthach, and Fergus, three histo-
rians, as the old distich —

" Laogar, Corccus, Daire the Hard,
Patrick, Benignus, Carnech the Mild,
Ros, Dubthach, Fergus, a thing known,
Are the nine Authors of the Great History."

The Welsh antiquarian may, perhaps, observe
that this likeness to the Triads is suspicious, a
view to which he may find plenty of confirmation
elsewhere.

Neither is it too much to say that such old
poems as are quoted in respect to the events of
the second and third centuries, are apparently
quoted as Virgil's description of Italy under
Evander might be quoted by a writer of the
Middle Ages.

The events recorded are, as a general rule, pro-
bable; but they cannot be considered real until
we see our way to the evidence by which they

140 IRISH ANNALS.

could be transmitted. The probable is as often
untrue, as the true is improbable. The question
in all these points is one of testimony.

The most satisfactory view of that period of
Irish antiquity, which is, at one and the same
time, anterior to the introduction of Christianity,
and subsequent to the earliest mention of Ireland
by Greek, Latin, and British writers, is that the
sources of its history were compositions composed
out of Ireland, but containing notices of Irish
events; in which case the Britons and Romans
have written more about Ireland than the Irish
themselves. This is an inference partly from the
presumptions of the case, and partly from internal
evidence.

Prichard, after Sharon Turner, has remarked
that the legend of Partholanus is found in Nen-
nius.

The Welsh name Arthur, strange to Ireland,
except during the period in question, is promi-
nent in the third century.

The Druidical religion, which on no unequi-
vocal evidence can be shewn to have been Irish,
has the same prominence during the same time.

The Fir-Bolg and Attecheith are also prominent
at this time, but not later. Now the Belgce and
Attacotti might easily be got from British or
Roman writers. The soil of Ireland, as soon as
its records improve, ceases to supply them.

IRISH ANNALS. 141

This is as far as it is necessary to proceed in
the criticism of our early authorities of British,
Irish, and Saxon origin, since it is not the object
of the present writer to throw any unnecessary
discredit over them, but only to inquire how far
they are entitled to the claim of deciding certain
questions finally, and of precluding criticism. It
is clear that they are only to be admitted when
opposed by a very slight amount of conflicting
improbabilities, when speaking to points capable
of being known, and when freed from several
elements of error and confusion. The practical
application of this inference will find place in the
eleventh chapter.

142 OBSCURITY OF

CHAPTER VIII.

THE ANGLES OF GERMANY [ THEIR COMPARATIVE OBSCURITY. —
NOTICE OF TACITUS. — EXTRACT FROM PTOLEMY. — CONDITIONS OF
THE ANGLE AREA.— THE VARINI. — THE REUDIGNI AND OTHER
POPULATIONS OF TACITUS. — THE SABALINGII, ETC., OF PTOLEMY.
— THE SUEVI ANGILI. — ENGLE AND ONGLE. — ORIGINAL ANGLE
AREA.

There are several populations of whom, like
quiet and retiring individuals, we know nothing
until they move; for, in their original countries,
they lead a kind of still life which escapes notice
and description, and which, if it were not for a
change of habits with a change of area, would
place them in the position of the great men who
lived before Agamemnon. They would pass from
the development to the death of their separate
existence unobserved, and no one know who they
were, where they lived, and what were their rela-
tions. But they move to some new locality, and
then, like those fruit-trees which, in order to be
prolific, must be transplanted, the noiseless and
unnoticed tenor of their original way is ex-
changed for an influential and prominent posi-
tion. They take up a large place in the world's
history. Sometimes this arises from an absolute
change of character with the change of circum-
stances; but oftener it is due to a more intel-

THE EARLIEST ANGLES. 143

ligible cause. They move from a country beyond
the reach of historical and geographical know-
ledge to one within it ; and having done this
they find writers who observe and describe them,
simply because they have come within the field
of observation and description.

It is no great stretch of imagination to picture
some of the stronger tribes of the now unknown
parts of Central Africa finding their way as far
southward as the Cape, when they would come
within the sphere of European observation. On
such a ground, they may play a conspicuous part
in history; conspicuous enough to be noticed by
historians, missionaries, and journalists. They
may even form the matter of a blue book. For
all this, however, they shall only be known in the
latter-days of their history. What they were in
their original domain may remain a mystery ;
and that, even when the parts wherein it lay
shall have become explored. For it is just pos-
sible that between the appearance of such a popu-
lation in a locality beyond the pale of then own
unexplored home, and the subsequent discovery
of that previously obscure area, the part which
was left behind — the parent portion — may have
lost its nationality, its language, its locality, its
independence, its name — any one or any number
of its characteristics. Perhaps, the name alone,
with a vague notice of its locality, may remain;

144 OBSCURITY OF

a name famous from the glory of its new coun-
try, but obscure, and even equivocal in its father-
land.

How truly are the Majiars of Hungary known
only from what they have been in Hungary.
Yet they are no natives of that country. It was
from the parts beyond the Uralian mountains
that they came, and when we visit those parts
and ask for their original home, we find no such
name, no such language, no such nationality as
that of the Majiars. We find Bashkirs, or some-
thing equally different instead. But north of the
old country of the Majiars — now no longer Ma-
jiar — we find Majiar characteristics; in other
words, we are amongst the first cousins of the
Hungarians, the descendants not of the exact
ancestors of the conquerors of Hungary, but of
the populations most nearly allied to such ances-
tors. And it is in these that we must study the
Majiar before he became European. The direct de-
scendants of the same parents have disappeared,
but collateral branches of the family survive; and
these we study, assuming that there is a family
likeness.

All this has been written in illustration of a
case near home. The Majiar of the Uralian wilds,
the Majiar of the Yaik and Oby, the Majiar, in
short, of Asia, is not more obscure, unknown, and
unimportant when compared with the country-

THE AXGLI OF TACITUS. 145

men of Hunyades, Zapolya, and Kossuth, than is
the Angle of Germany when contrasted with the
Angle of England, the Angle of the great conti-
nent with the Angle of the small island. When
we say that the former is named by Tacitus,
Ptolemy, and a few other less important writers,
we have said all. There is the name, and little
enough besides. What does the most learned
ethnologist know of a people called the Encloses ?
Nothing. He speculates, perhaps, on a letter-
change, and fancies that by prefixing a Ph, and
inserting an n he can convert the name into
Phundusii. But what does he know of the
Phundusii. Nothing; except that by ejecting
the ph and omitting the n he can reduce them
to Encloses. Then come the Aviones, whom, by
omission and rejection, we can identify with the
Obii, of whom we know little, and also convert
into the Cobandi, of whom we know less. The
Reudigni — what light comes from these ? The
Nuitlwnes — what from these ? The Suardones
— what from these ? Now, it is not going too far
if we say that, were it not for the conquest of
England, the Angles of Germany would have
been known to the ethnologist just as the Avi-
ones are, i. e., very little ; that, like the Eudoses,
they might have had their very name tampered
with ; and that, like the Suardones and Reu-
digni and Nuitlwnes, they might have been any-

146 THE ANGLI OF TACITUS.

thing or nothing in the way of ethnological
affinit}^ historical development, and geographical
locality.

This is the true case. Nine-tenths of what is
known of the Angli of Germany is known froni
a single passage, and every word in that single
passage which applies to Angli applies to the
Encloses, Aviones, Reudigni, Suardones, and
Nuithones as well.

The passage in question is the 40th section of
the Germania of Tacitus, and is as follows : —

" Contra Langobardos paucitas nobilitat : plu-
rimis ac valentissimis nationibus cincti non per
obsequium sed prseliis et periclitando tuti sunt.
Reudigni, deinde, et Aviones, et Angli, et Varini,
et Suardones, et Nuithones fluminibus aut sylvis
muniuntur ; neque quidquam notabile in singulis
nisi quod in commune Hertham, id est, Terrain
Matrem colunt, eamque intervenire rebus homi-
num, invehi populis arbitrantur. Est in insula
Oceani castum nemus, dicatum in eo vehiculum,
veste contectum, attingere uni sacerdoti conces-
sum. Is adesse penetrali deam intelligit, vec-
tamque bobus feminis multa cum veneratiom
prosequitur. Lseti tunc dies, festa loca, qusecun-
que adventu hospitioque dignatur. Non belh
ineunt, non arma summit, clausum omne fer-
ritin ; pax et quies tunc tantum nota, tunc tan-
tum amata, donee idem sacerdos satiatam con-

THE ANGLI OF TACITUS. 147

versatione mortalium deam templo reddat : mox
vehiculum et vestes, et si credere velis, numen
ipsum secreto lacu abluitur. Servi ministrant,
quos statim idem lacus haurit. Arcanus hinc
terror, sanctaque ignorantia, quid sit id, quod
perituri tantum vident."

Let us ask what we get from this passage when
taken by itself, i. e., without the light thrown
upon it by the present existence of the descend-
ants of the Angli as the English of England.

We get the evidence of a good writer, that six
nations considered by him as sufficiently Ger-
manic to be included in his Germania, were far
enough north of the Germans who came in im-
mediate contact with Rome to be briefly and im-
perfectly described and near enough the sea to
frequent an Island worshipping a goddess with
a German name and certain remarkable attri-
butes. This is the most we get ; and to get this
we must shut our eyes to more than one compli-
cation.

a. Thus the country that can most reasonably
be assigned to the Varini, is in the tenth cen-
tury the country of the Varnavi, who are no
Germans, but Slavonians.

b. Another reading, instead of Hertham, is
Nerthum, a name less decidedly Germanic.

All we get beyond this is from their subse-
quent histories ; and of these subsequent his-

148 THE ANGLI OF TACITUS.

tories there is only one — the Angle or English.
Truly, then, may we say that the Angles of Ger-
many are only known from their relations to the
Angles of England.

Let us inquire into the geographical and eth-
nological conditions of the Angli of Tacitus ; and
first in respect to their geography.

1. They must be placed as far north as the
Weser; because the area required for the Cherusci,
Fosi, Chasuarii, Dulgubini, Chamavi, and Angri-
varii must be carried to a certain extent north-
wards ; and the populations in question lay beyond
these.

2. They must not be carried very far north of
the Elbe. The reasons for this are less conclu-
sive. They lie, however, in the circumstance of
Ptolemy s notices placing them in a decidedly
southern direction ; and, as Tacitus has left their
locality an open question, the evidence of even a
worse authority than Ptolemy ought to be deci-
sive,— " of the nations of the interior the greatest
is that of Suevi Angili, who are the most eastern
of the Longobardi, stretching as far northwards
as the middle Elbe/' The same writer precludes
us from placing them in Holstein and Sleswick
by filling up the Peninsula by populations other
than Ancde, one of which is the Saxon. But these
Saxons we are not at liberty to identify with the
Angli of Tacitus, because, by so doing, we separate

THE ANGLI OF TACITUS. 149

them from the more evidently related Angili of
Ptolemy. Ptolemy draws a distinction between
the two, and writes that " after the Chauci on the
neck of the Cimbric Chersonese, came the Saxons,
after the Saxons, as far as the river Chalusus, the
Pharodini. In the Chersonese itself there extend,
beyond the Saxons, the Sigulones on the west,
then the Sabalingii, then the Cobandi, above them
the Chali, then above these, but more to the west,
the Phundusii ; more to the east the Charades,
and most of all to the north, the Cimbri."

S. They must not come quite up to the sea,
since we have seen from Ptolemy that the Chauci
and Saxones joined, and as the Saxons were on
the neck of the Peninsula, or the south-eastern
parts of Holstein, the Chauci must have lain
between the Angli and the sea, probably, how-
ever, on a very narrow strip of coast.

4. They must not have reached eastwards much
farther than the frontiers of Lauenburg and Lunen-
burg, since, as soon as we get definite historical
notices of these countries, they are Slavonic —
and, whatever may be said to the contrary, there
is no evidence of this Slavonic occupancy being
recent.

These conditions give us the northern part of
the kingdom of Hanover as the original Angle
area.

Their ethnological affinities are simpler. They

150 THE ANGLI OF TACITUS.

spoke the language which afterwards became
the Anglo-Saxon of Alfred, and the English of
Milton. In this we have the first and most
definite of their differential characteristics — the
characteristics which distinguished them from
the closely allied Cheruscans, Chamavi, Angri-
varii and other less important nations.

Their religious cultus, as far at least as the
worship of Mother Earth in a Holy Island, was
a link which connected the Angli with the po-
pulations to the north rather than to the south
of them ; and — as far as we may judge from the
negative fact of finding no Angles in the great
confederacy that the energy of Arminius formed
against the aggression of Rome — their political
relations did the same. But this is uncertain.

Such was the supposed area of the ancient
Angles of Germany, and it agrees so well with
all the ethnological conditions of the populations
around, that it should not be objected to, or re-
fined upon, on light grounds. The two varieties
of the German languages to which the Anglo-
Saxon bore the closest relationship, were the
Old Saxon and the Frisian, and each of these
are made conterminous with it by the recogni-
tion of the area in question — the Old Saxon to
the south, the Frisian to the west, and, probably,
to the north as well. It is an area, too, which is
neither unnecessarily large, nor preposterously

THE ANGLI OF TACITUS. 151

small ; an area which gives its occupants the
navigable portions of two such rivers as the Elbe
and Weser ; one which places them in the neces-
sary relations to their Holy Island (an island
which, for the present we assume to be Heligo-
land); and, lastly, one which without being ex-
actly the nearest part of the continent, fronts
Britain, and is well situated for descents upon
the British coast.

During the third, fourth, and fifth centuries we
hear nothing of the Angli. They re-appear in the
eighth. But then they are the Angles of Beda,
the Angles of Britain — not those of Germany —
the Angles of a new locality, and of a conquered
country — not the parent stock on its original con-
tinental home. Of these latter the history of Beda
says but little. Neither does the history of any
other writer ; indeed it is not too much to say that
they have no authentic, detailed, and consecutive
history at all, either early or late, either in the time
of Beda when the Angles of England are first de-
scribed, or in the time of any subsequent writer.
There are reasons for this ; as will be seen if we
look to their geographical position, and the rela-
tions between them and the neighbouring popula-
tions. The Angles of Germany were too far north
to come in contact with the Romans. That we met
with no Angli in the great Arminian Confederacy
has already been stated. When the Romans "were

152 THE VAKINI.

.

the aggressors, the Angli lay beyond the pale of
their ambition. When the Romans were on the
defensive the Angli were beyond the opportuni-
ties of attack.

All attempts to illustrate the history of the
Angles of Germany by means of that of the
nations mentioned in conjunction with them by
Tacitus, is obscurum per obscurius. It is more
than this. The connexion creates difficulties. The
Langobardi, who gave their name to Lombardy,
were anything but Angle ; inasmuch as their lan-
guage was a dialect of the High German division.
Hence, if we connect them with our own ances-
tors we must suppose that when they changed
their locality they changed their speech also.
But no such assumption is necessary. All that
we get from the text of Tacitus is, that they
were in geographical contiguity with the Reu-
digni, &c.

The Yarini are in a different predicament.
They are mentioned in the present text along
with the Angli, and they are similarly men-
tioned in the heading of a code of laws referred
to the tenth century. Every name in this latter
document is attended with difficulties.

Incipit Lex Anglorum et Werinorum, hoc est
Thuringorum. — To find Angli in Thuringia by
themselves would be strange. So it would be
to find Werini. But to find the two combined

THE VAEINI. 153

is exceedingly puzzling. I suggest the likeli-
hood of there having been military colonies,
settled by some of the earlier successors of Char-
lemagne, if not by Charlemagne himself. There
are other interpretations ; but this seems the
likeliest. That the Varini and Angli were con-
tiguous populations in the time of Tacitus, join-
ing each other on the Lower Elbe, even as they
join each other in his text, is likely. It is also
likely that when their respective areas were con-
quered, each should have supplied the elements
of a colony to the conqueror.

At the same time, I do not think that their
ethnological relations were equally close. The
Varini I believe to have been Slavonians. There
is no difficulty in doing this. The only difficulty
lies in the choice between two Slavonic popula-
tions. Adam of Bremen places a tribe, which he
sometimes calls Warnabi, and sometimes War-
nahi (Helmoldus calling it Warnavi), between
the river Hevel in Brandenburg and the Obo-
trites of Mecklenburg -Schwerin. He mentions
them, too, in conjunction with the Linones of
Lun-ehiiYg. Now this evidence fixes them in the
parts about the present district of Warnow, on
the Elde, a locality which is further confirmed by
two chartas of the latter part of the twelfth cen-
tury— "silva quse destinguit terras Havelliere
scilicet et Muritz, eandem terrain quoque Muritz

154 THE VARIXI.

et Vepero cum terminis suis ad terrain Warnowe
ex utraque parte fluminis quod Eldene dicitur
usque ad castrum Grabow." Also — " distinguit
tandem terram Moritz et Veprouwe cum omnibus
terminis suis ad terram quae Warnowe vocatur,
includens et terram Warnowe cum terminis suis
ex utraque parte fluminis quod Eldena dicitur
usque ad castrum quod Grabou vocatur." Such
is one of the later populations of the parts on the
Lower Elbe, which may claim to represent the
Verini of Tacitus.

But the name re-appears. In the Life of Bishop
Otto, the Isle of Rugen is called Verania* and
the population Verani — eminent for their pa-
ganism. To reconcile these two divisions of the
Mecklenburg populations is a question for the
Slavonic archaeologist. Between the two we get
some light for the ethnology of the VarinL Their
island is Rugen rather than Heligoland. The
island, however, that best suits the Angli is Heli-
goland rather than Rugen. Which is which?
The following hypothesis has already been sug-
gested. " What if the Yarini had one holy island,
and the Angli another — so that the insula? sacra?,
with their corresponding casta nemora, were two
in number? I submit that a writer with no bet-
ter means of knowing the exact truth than Ta-
citus, might, in such a case, when he recognized

* Zeuss ad vv. Rugiani, Warnahi.

THE REUDIGNI. 155

the insular character common to the two forms
of cidtus, easily and pardonably, refer them to one
and the same island; in other words, he might
know the general fact that the Angli and Varini
worshipped in an island, without knowing the
particular fact of their each having a separate
one.

This is what really happened ; so that the hy-
pothesis is as follows: —

a. The truly and undoubtedly Germanic Angli
worshipped in Heligoland.

b. The probably Slavonic Varini worshipped in
the Isle of Eugen.

c. The holy island of Tacitus is that of the
Angli —

d. With whom the Varini are inaccurately
associated —

e. The source of the inaccuracy lying in the
fact of that nation having a holy island, different
from that of the Angles, but not known to be so.*

We have got now, in the text of Tacitus, the
Angli as a Germanic and the Varini as a Slavonic,
population. The Langobardi may be left unno-
ticed for the present. But round which of the
two are the remaining tribes to be grouped, the
Reudigni, the Aviones, Eudoses, the Suardones,
and Nuithones.

The Reudigni. — Whether we imagine the Latin

* From the " Germania of Tacitus with Ethnological Notes."

156 THE REUDIGNI.

form before us to represent such a word as the
German ~Reud-ing-as, or the Slavonic Beud-mie*
(of either of which it may be the equivalent), the
two last syllables are inflexional; the first only
belonging to the root. Now, although unknown
to any Latin writer but Tacitus, the syllable Reud
as the element of a compound, occurs in the Ice-
landic Sagas. Whoever the Goths of Scandinavia
may have been, they fell into more than one class.
There were, for instance, the simple Goths of Got-
land, the island Goths of Ey-gotoAsmd, and,
thirdly, the Goths of Reidh-gota-land. Where
was this? Reidhgotaland was an old name of
Jutland. Reidhgotaland was also the name of
a country east of Poland. Zeuss-f well suggests
that these conflicting facts may be reconciled by
considering the prefix Reidh, to denote the Goths
of the Continent in opposition to the word Ey,
denoting the Goths of the Islands ; both being
formidable and important nations, both being in
political and military relations to the Danes,
Swedes, and Norwegians, and both being other
than Germanic.

In the Traveller's Song a more remarkable com-
pound is found; Hreth-king —

He with Ealhild,
Faithful peace-weaver,

* As a general rule, I believe that the combination -ing, repre-
sents a German, the combination -ign a Slavonic, word,
t In v. Jutce.

THE REUDIGNI. 157

For the first time,

Of the Hreth-ldng

Sought the home,

East of Ongle,

Of Eormenric,

The fierce faith-breaker.

Now, although the usual notions respecting the
locality of the great Gothic empire of Hermanric
are rather invalidated than confirmed by this ex-
tract, the relation between the Hreths and Ongle
is exactly that between the Reudigni and Angli,
Neither are there other facts wanting which
would bring the rule of Hermanric as far north
as the latitude of the Angli, though not, perhaps,
so far east. His death is said to have been occa-
sioned by the revolt of two Rlwxalanian princes.
Now the Rhoxalani were, at least, as far north
as the Angli, however much farther they may
have lain eastwards.

But in the same poem we meet with the name
in the simple form Hrced; for, when we remem-
ber that one of the Icelandic notices of Reidhgota-
land is that it lay to the east of Poland, we
may fairly infer that Keidhgotaland was the
country of the nation mentioned in the following
passage: —

Eadwine I sought aud Elsa,

iEgelmund and Huugar,

And the proud host

Of the With-Myrginga ;

Wuifhere I sought and Wyrnhere ;

158 SABALINGII, ETC., OF PTOLEMY.

Full oft war ceas'd not there,
When the II reeds' army,
With hard swords,
About Vistula's wood
Had to defend
Their ancient native seat
Against the folk of ^tla.

Such faint light then as can be thrown upon
the Reudigni of Tacitus disconnects them with
the Angli both geographically and ethnologically,
connecting them with the Prussians, and placing
them on the Lower Vistula

The Aviones. — The Aviones are either un-
known to history, or known under the slightly
modified form of Chaviones. Maximian conquers
them about A.D. 289. His Panegyrist Mamerti-
nus associates them with the Heruli. Perhaps,
the Obii are the same people. If so, they cross
the Danube in conjunction with the Langobardi,
and are mentioned, as having done so, by Petrus
Patricius

The Eudoses will be noticed when Ptolemy's
list comes under consideration.

So will the Suardones.

No light has ever been thrown on the Nui-
thones.

Over and above the Saxons, to whom a special
chapter will be devoted, Ptolemy's list contains: —

]. The Sigulones. — The Saxons lay to the
north of Elbe, on the neck of the Chersonese, and

159

the Sigulones occupied the Chersonese itself, west-
wards. Two populations thus placed between the
Atlantic and the Baltic, immediately north of the
Elbe, leave but little room for each other.
" Then/' writes Ptolemy, " come —

2. The Sabalingii. — then —

3. The Kobandi. — above these —

4. The Ghali — and above them, but more to the
west —

5. The Phundusii. — more to the east —

6. The Charwdes — and most to the north of
all—

7. The Cimbri."

8. The Pharodini lay next to the Saxons, be-
tween the Elvers Chalusus and Suebus.

Tacitus' geography is obscure ; Ptolemy's is dif-
ficult. One wants light. The other gives us
conflicting facts. Neither have the attempts to
reconcile them been successful. The first point
that strikes us is the difference of the names in
the two authors. No Sigulones and Sabalingii in
Tacitus. No Nuithones and Reudigni in Ptolemy.
Then there is the extremely northern position
which the latter gives the Cimbri. His Charudes,
too, cannot well be separated from Caesar's Ha-
rudes. Nevertheless, their area is inconveniently
distant from the seat of war in the invasion of
Gaul under Ariovistus, of whose armies the Ha-
rudes form a part. The River Chalusus is rea-

160 SABALINGII, ETC., OF PTOLEMY.

sonably considered to be the Trave. But the
Suebus is not the Oder; though the two are often
identified: inasmuch as the geographer continues
to state that after the Pharodini come "the Si-
dini to the river Iadua" (the Oder?), " and, after
them, the Rutikleii as far as the Vistula/'

Zeuss has allowed himself to simplify some of
the details by identifying certain of the Ptole-
msean names with those of Tacitus. Thus he
thinks that, by supposing the original word to
have been ^apoS-ivoi, the <Papo$iv-oi and Suar-
don-es may be made the same. Kobandi, too, he
thinks may be reduced to Ghaviones, or Aviones.
Thirdly, by the prefix <P, and the insertion of N,
Eudos-es may be converted into (PhvShv-iol

Those who know the degree to which the mo-
dern German philologists act upon the doctrine
that Truth is stranger than Fiction, and, by
unparalleled manipulations reconcile a so-called
iron-bound system of scientific letter -changes
with results as extraordinary as those of the Kel-
tic and Hebraic dreamers of the last century, will
see in such comparisons as these nothing extra-
ordinary. On the contrary, they will give them
credit for being moderate. And so they are : for
it is extremely likely that whilst Tacitus got his
names from German, Ptolemy got his from Kel-
tic, or Slavonic, sources ; and if such be the case,
a very considerable latitude is allowable.

THE SABALINGIAXS. 161

Yet, even if we make the Cobandi, Aviones ;
the Phundusii, Eudoses ; and the Pharodini, Suar-
dones (probably, also, the Siveordwere, of the
Traveller s Song), the geographical difficulties are
still considerable. Saxons on the neck of the
Chersonese (say in Stormar) with Sigulones (say
in Holstein) to the west of them are fully suffi-
cient to stretch from sea to sea ; but beyond (and
this we must suppose to be in a westerly direc-
tion) are the Sabalingii, and then the Kobandi ;
above (north of) these the Chali (whom we should
expect to be connected with the river Chalusus),
and west of these the Phundusii. Similar com-
plications can easily be added.

The meaning of the word Sabalingii is ex-
plained, if we may assume a slight change in the
reading. How far it is legitimate, emendatory
critics may determine ; but by transposing the
B and L, the word becomes Sa-lab-mgii. The
Slavonic is the tongue that explains this.

1. The Slavonic name of the Elbe is Laba ;
and —

2. The Slavonic for Transalbian, as a term for
the population beyond the Elbe, would be Sa-
lab-ingii. This compound is common. The Finns
of Karelia are called Za-volok-ian, because they
live beyond the voloh or watershed. The Kos-
sacks of the Dnieper are called Za-porog-ian,
because they live beyond the porog or waterfall.

162 THE SUEVI ANGEILI.

The population in question I imagine to have
been called Sa-lab-ingian, because they lived
beyond the Laba, or Elbe.

Now a name closely akin to Salabingian actu-
ally occurs at the beginning of the Historical
period. The population of the Duchy of Lauen-
burg is (then) Slavonic. So is that of south-east-
ern Holstein ; since the Saxon area begins with
the district of Stormar. So is that of Luneburg.
And the name of these Slavonians of the Elbe
is Po-lab-ingii (on the Elbe), just as Po-mora-nia
is the country on the sea. Of the Po-labingians,
then, the #a-labingii were the section belonging
to that side of the Elbe to which the tribe that
used the term did not belong. Such are the
reasons for believing the name to be Slavonic.

There are specific grounds, of more or less value,
then, for separating the Angli from, at least, the
following populations — the Varini, the Reudigni,
the Eudoses, the Phundusii, the Suardones, tin
Pharodini, and the Sabalingii (Salabingii ?) ; in-
deed, the Sigulones and Harudes seem to be th<
only Germans of two lists. The former, I think,
was Frisian rather than Angle, the latter Olc
Saxon rather than Anglo-Saxon ; for, notwith-
standing some difficulties of detail which will b*
noticed in another chapter, the Charudes must
be considered the Germans of the Hartz. Tin
Sigulones, being placed so definitely to the west

THE ANGLES 163

of the Saxons, were probably the Nordalbingians
of Holsatia.*

The last complication which will be noticed is
in the following extract from Ptolemy. — " But of
the inland nations far in the interior the greatest
are that of the Suevi Angeili, who are east of
the Longobardi, stretching to the north, as far as
the middle parts of the river Elbe, that of the
Suevi Semnones, who, when we leave the Elbe,
reach from the aforesaid (middle) parts, east-
wards, as far as the River Suebus, and that of
the Buguntaa next in succession, extending as far
as the Vistula/' — Lib. ii. c. xi.

This connexion of the Angles with the Suevi
requires notice ; though it should not cause any
serious difficulty. The term Suevi, or Suevia,
is used in a very extensive signification, denoting
the vast tracts east of the better known districts
of Germany ; and in a similar sense it is used by
both Tacitus and Caesar. The notion of any
specific connection with the Suevi of Suabia is
unnecessary.

It has already been stated that in the Travel-
ler's Song the Kingdom of Hermanric is placed
east of Ongle. Either this means that the one
country was east of the other, in the way that
Hungary is east of the Rhine, or else an unre-

* See Chapter ix.

164 THE ANGLES.

cognized extension must be given to one of the
two areas.

In one part of the poem in question the form
is not Ongle but Engle —

" 'Mid iihglum ic wees, and mid Swsefum —
With Angles I was, and with Sueves." — Line 121.

The result of the previous criticism is —

1. That the Angli of Germany distinguished,
by the use of that form of speech which after-
wards became Anglo-Saxon, from the Slavonians
of south-eastern Holstein, Lauenburg, Luneburg,
and Altmark, from the Old Saxons of Westpha-
lia, and from the Frisians of the sea-coast be-
tween the Ems and Elbe, occupied, with the ex-
ceptions just suggested, the northern two-thirds
of the present Kingdom of Hanover.

2. That they were the only members of the
particular section of the German population t(
which they belonged, i. e., the section using th(
Anglo-Saxon rather than the Old Saxon speech.

Their relations to the population of the Cim-
bric Chersonese will form the subject of the nexl
chapter.

THE SAXONS. 165

CHAPTER IX

THE SAXONS— OF UPPER SAXON? — OF LOWER OR OLD SAXONY: —
NORDALBINGIANS. — SAXONS OF PTOLEMY. — PRESENT AND AN-
CIENT POPULATIONS OF SLESWICK-HOLSTEIN. NORTH FRISIANS.

PROBABLE ORIGIN OF THE NAME SAXON. THE LITTUS SAX-

ONICUM. — SAXONES BAJOCASSINI.

The ethnologist of England has to deal with
a specific section of those numerous Germans,
who, in different degrees of relationship to each
other, have been known, at different times, under
the name of Saxon ; a name which has by no
means a uniform signification, a name which has
been borne by every single division and sub-
division of the Teutonic family, the Proper
Goths alone excepted. At present, however, he
only knows that the counties of ~Es-sex, Sussex,
and Middle-sea; are the localities of the East-
Saxons, the South-Saxons, and the Middle-
Saxons, respectively ; that in the sixth and
seventh centuries there was a Kingdom of Wes-
sex, or the West-Saxons ; that Angle and Saxon
were nearly convertible terms ; and that Anglo-
Saxon is the name of the English Language in
its oldest known stage. How these names came
to be so nearly synonymous, or how certain
south-eastern counties of England and a Ger

166 THE UPPER SAXONS.

man Kingdom on the frontier of Bohemia, bear
names so much alike as Sus-se# and Sax-<my,
are questions which he has yet to solve.

The German Kingdom of Saxony may be dis-
posed of first. It is chiefly in name that it has
any relation to the Saxon parts of England. In
language and blood there are numerous points of
difference. The original population was Sla-
vonic, which began to be displaced by Germans
from the left bank of the Saale as early as the
seventh century ; possibly earlier. The language
of these Slavonians was spoken in the neighbour-
hood of Leipsic as late as the fourteenth century,
and at the present time two populations in Sile-
sia and Lusatia still retain it — the Srbie, and
Srskie. Sorabi, Milcieni, Siusli, and Lusicii, are
the designations of these populations in the time
of Charlemagne ; and, earlier still, they were in-
cluded in the great name of Semnones. It is only
because they were conquered from that part of
Germany which was called Saxonia or Saxen-
lomd, or else because numerous colonies of the
previously reduced Saxons of the Lower Weser
were planted on their territory, that their pre-
sent name became attached to them. Slavonic
in blood, and High German in language, the
Saxons of the Upper Elbe, or the Saxons of
Upper Saxony, are but remotely connected with
the ancestors of the Anglo-Saxons of Britain.

THE LOWER SAXONS. 167

In Upper Saxony, at least, the name is not
native.

Lower Saxony was the country on the Lower
Elbe, and also of the Lower Weser, and until
the extension of the name to the parts about
Leipsic and Dresden, was simply known as
Saxonia, or the Land of the Saxones ; at least,
the qualifying adjective Lower made no part
of the designation. Saxony was what it was
called by the Merovingian Francs, as well as the
Carlovingians who succeeded them. Whether,
however, any portion of the indigense so called
itself is uncertain. In the latter half of the
eighth century it falls into three divisions, two
of which are denoted by geographical or political
designations, and one by the name of a native
population.

The present district of TTes^-phalia was one
of them ; its occupants being called TFesi-falahi,
TFiestf-falai, West-idXi. These were the Saxons of
the Rhine. Contrasted with these, the East-\Avd-
lians (Ost-fal&i, Os£-falahi, Ost-fali, Oster-leudi,
Austre-leudi, Aust-r&sn), stretched towards the
Elbe.

Between the two, descendants of the Angri-
varii of Tacitus, and ancestors of the present
Germans of the parts about Engem, lay the
Angr-arii, or Ang-SLvii.

An unknown poet of the eighth century, but

168 THE LOWER SAXONS.

one whose sentiments indicate a Saxon origin,
thus laments the degenerate state of his coun-
try :

" Generalis habet populos divisio ternos,
Insignita quibus Saxonia floruit olim ;
Nomina nunc remanent virtus antiqua recessit.
Denique Westfalos vocitant in parte manentes
Occidua ; quorum non longe terminus amne
A Rheno distat 1 regionem solis ad ortum
Inhabitant Osterleudi, quos nomine quidam
Ostvalos alii vocitant, confinia quorum
Infestant conjuncta suis gens perfida Sclavi.
Inter predictos media regione morantur
Angarii, populus Saxonum tertius ; horum
Patria Francorum terris sociatur ab Austro,
Oceanoque eadem conjungitur ex Aquilone."

The conquest of Charlemagne is the reason
for the language being thus querulous; for, un-
like Upper Saxony, the Saxony of the Lower
Weser, the Saxony of the Angrivarii, Westfalii,
and Ostfalii, was truly the native land of an old
and heroic German population, of a population
which under Arminius had resisted Home, of a
population descended from the Chamavi, the Dul-
gubini, the Fosi, and the Cherusci of Tacitus, and,
finally, the land of a population whose immedi-
ate and closest affinities were with the Angles of
Hanover, and the Frisians of Friesland, rather
than with the Chatti of Hesse, or the Franks of
the Carlovingian dynasty.

How far are these the Saxons of Sus-s&c, Es-

THE OLD SAXONS. 169

sex, and Middle-se# ? Only so far as they were
Angles; and, except in the parts near the Elbe,
they were other than Angle. This we know from
their language, in which a Gospel Harmony, in
alliterative metre, a fragmentary translation of
the Psalms, and a heroic rhapsody called Hildu-
brant and Hathubrant have come down to us.

The parts where the dialects of these particular
specimens were spoken are generally considered
to have been the country about Essen, Cleves,
and Munster; and, although closely allied to the
Anglo-Saxon of England, the Westphalian Saxon
is still a notably different form of speech. It was
the Angle language in its southern variety, or
(changing the expression) the Angle was the most
northern form of it.

We have seen that Saxony and Saxon were no
native terms on the Upper Elbe. Were they so in
the present area — in Westphalia, Eastphalia, and
the land of the Angrivarii? Tacitus knows no
such name at all; and Ptolemy, the first writer
in whom we find it, attaches it to a population of
the Cimbric Peninsula. Afterwards, in the third
and fourth centuries it is applied by the Koman
and Byzantine writers in a general sense, to those
maritime Germans whose piracies were the bold-
est, and whose descents upon the Provinces of
Gaul and Britain were most dreaded Yet no-
where can we find a definite tract of country

170 THE OLD SAXONS.

upon which we can lay our finger and say this is
the land of Saxons, saving only the insignificant
district to the north of the Elbe, mentioned by
Ptolemy. From the time of Honorius to that of
Charlemagne, Saxo is, like Franc, a general term
applied, indeed, to the maritime Germans rather
than those of the interior, and to those of the
north rather than the south, yet nowhere speci-
fically attached to any definite population with a
local habitation and a name to match. When-
ever we come to detail, the Saxons of the Ro-
man writers become Chamavi, Bructeri, Cherusci,
Chauci, or Frisii ; while the Frank details are
those of the Ostphali, Westphali, and Angrivarh.

But the Frank writers under the Merovingian
and Carlovingian dynasties are neither the only
nor the earliest authors who speak of the Hano-
verians and Westphalians under the general name
of Saxon. The Christianized Angles of England
used the same denomination ; and, as early as the
middle of the eighth century, Beda mentions the
Fresones, Rugini, Dani, Huni, Antiqui Saxones,
Boructuarii. — Hist. Eccles. 5, 10. Again — the
Boructuarii, descendants of the nearly extermi-
nated Bructeri of Tacitus, and occupants of the
country on the Lower Lippe, are said to have been
reduced by the nation of the Old Saxons (a gente
Antiquorum Saxonum). In other records we
find the epithet Antiqui translated by the native

THE OLD SAXONS. 171

word eald (= old) and the formation of the com-
pound Altsaxones — Gregorius Papa uni verso po-
pulo provincise Altsaxonum (vita St. Bonifac :).
Lastly, the Anglo-Saxon writers of England use
the term Eald-Seaxan ( = Old Saxon). And this
form is current amongst the scholars of the pre-
sent time; who call the language of the Heliand,
of the so-called Carolinian Psalms and of Hilde-
brant and Hathubrant, the 0£c£-Saxon, in contra-
distinction to the Anglo-Saxon of Alfred, Cead-
mon, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The au-
thority of the Anglo-Saxons themselves justifies
this compound ; yet it is by no means unexcep-
tionable. Many a writer has acquiesced in the
notion that the Old-Saxon was neither more nor
less than the Anglo-Saxon in a continental loca-
lity, and the Anglo-Saxon but the Old-Saxon
transplanted into England. Again — the Old-
Saxons have been considered as men who struck,
as with a two-edged sword, at Britain on the one
side, and at Upper Saxony on the other, so that
the Saxons of Leipsic and the Saxons of London
are common daughters of one parent — the Saxons
of Westphalia.

The exact relations, however, to the Old-Sax-
ons and the Anglo-Saxons seem to have been as
follows : —

The so-called Old-Saxon is the old Westpha-
lian —

172 THE NORDALBINGIANS.

The so-called Anglo-Saxon the old Hanoverian
population.

Their languages were sufficient alike to be mu-
tually intelligible, and after the conversion of
the Angles of England, who became Christianized
about A.D. 600, the extension of their own creed
to the still Pagan Saxons of the Continent be-
came one of the great duties to the bishops and
missionaries of Britain ; who, although themselves
of Hanoverian rather than Westphalian extrac-
tion, looked upon the whole stock at large as
their parentage, and called their cousins (so to
say) in Westphalia, and their brothers in Hanover
by the collective term Old-Saxon.

All the Angles, then, of the Saxonia of the
Frank and British writers of the eighth century
were Saxon, though all the Saxons were not
Angle.

Eastphalia, the division which must have been
the most Angle reached as far as the Elbe.

But there was, also, a Saxony beyond East-
phalia, a Saxony beyond the Elbe; the coun-
try of the Saxones Transalbiani ; other names
for its occupants being Nord-albingi {—men to
the north of the Elbe), and Nord-leudi (= North
people). The poet already quoted, writes —

Saxonum populus quidam, quos claudit ab Austro
Albis sejunctim positos Aquilonis ad axem.
Hos Xordalhiagos patlio seraione vocamus.

THE NORDALBINGIAXS. 173

In this case as before, Saxon is a generic ra-
ther than a particular name. The facts that prove
this give us also the geographical position of the
Nordalbingians. They fell into three divisions :

1. The Thiedmarsi, Thiatmarsgi, or Dit-
marshers, whose capital was Meldorp: — primi ad
Oceanum Thiatmarsgi, et eorum ecclesia Mil-
dindorp —

2. The Holsati, Holtzati, or Holtsaztan, from
whom the present Dutchy of Holstein takes its
name — dicti a sylvis, quas incolunt* The river
Sturia separated the Holsatians from —

3. The Stormarii, or people of Stormar ; of
whom Hamburg was the capital — Adam Bre-
mens: Hist. Eccles. c. 61.

These are the Nordalbingians of the eighth
century. Before we consider their relations to
the Westphalian and Hanoverian Saxons the
details of the present ethnology of the Cimbric
Peninsula are necessary. At the present moment
Holstein, Stormar, and Ditmarsh are Low Ger-
man, or Platt-Deutsch, districts; the High Ger-
man being taught in the schools much as English
is taught in the Scotch Highlands. Eydersted
also is Low German, and so are the southern
and eastern parts of Sleswick. Not so, however,
the western. Facing the Atlantic, we find an

* The compound is of the same kind with the English words
Dor-set, and Somerset, i. e., from the Anglo-Saxon satan = settler*.

174? THE NOKTH-FRISIANS.

interesting population, isolated in locality, and
definitely stamped with old and original charac-
teristics. They are as different from the Low
Germans on the one side as the Dutch are from
the English ; and they are as little like the Danes
on the other. They are somewhat bigger and
stronger than either; at least both Danes and
Germans may be found who own to their being
bigger if not better. They shew, too, a greater
proportion of blue eyes and flaxen locks ; though
these are common enough on all sides. That
breadth of frame out of which has arisen the epi-
thet Dutch-built, is here seen in its full develop-
ment; with a sevenfold shield of thick, woollen
petticoats to set it of. So that there are charac-
teristics, both of dress and figure, which suffi-
ciently distinguish the North-Frisian of Sles-
wick from the Dane on one side and the German
on the other.

It is only, however, in the more inaccessible
parts of their country that the differential of
dress rise to the dignity of a separate and inde-
pendent costume. They do so, however, in some
of those small islands which lie off the coast of
Sleswick ; three of which are supposed to have
been the three islands of the Saxons, in the
second and third centuries. A party, which the
writer fell in with, from Fohr, were all dressed
alike, all in black, all in woollen, with capes over

THE NORTH-FRISIANS. 175

the heads instead of bonnets. " Those/' says the
driver, who was himself half Dane and half Ger-
man, " are from Fohr. They have been to Flens-
burg to see one of their relations. He is a sailor.
They are all sailors in Fohr. Some of them, per-
haps, smugglers — they all dress so — I can't speak
to them — my brother can — he has been in Eng-
land, and an Englishman can talk to them — they
talk half Danish and half Piatt -Deutsch, and
half English — more than half. They were Eng-
lishmen once — a good sort of people — took no
part in the war — did not much care for the
Danes, though the Danes took pains to persuade
them — so did the Germans, but they did not much
care for the Germans either — strong men — good
soldiers — good sailors — Englishmen, but not like
the Englishmen Fve seen myself. My brother's
been in London and America, and can talk with
them."

What is thus said about their English-hood is
commonly believed by the Danes and Germans
of the Frisian localities. They are English in
some way or other, though how no one knows
exactly. And many learned men hold the same
view. It is a half-truth. They are more English,
and, at the same time, more Dutch, than any of
their neighbours ; more so than either Dane or
German, but for all that they are something that
is neither English nor Dutch. They are Frisians

176 THE NORTH-FRISIANS.

of the same stock as the Frisians of Friesland,
whom they resemble in form, and dress, and
manners, and speech, and temper, and history.
But from the Frisians of the south they have
been cut off for many centuries, partly by the
hand of man, partly by the powers of Nature,
partly by invasions from Germans, and partly b}^
overwhelming inbreaks of the Ocean. There is
a Frisian country in the south (the present
Province of Friesland), and there is a Frisian
country in the north (the tract which we are
speaking of) ; and these are parts of the terra
firma. But the Friesland that lay between the
two is lost — lost, though we know where it is.
It is at the bottom of the sea : forfeited, like the
lava-stricken plains of Sicily, of Campania, and of
Iceland, in the great game of Man against Nature
— for it is not everywhere that Man has been the
winner. The war of the Frisians against the
sea has been the war not of the Titans against
Jove, but of the Amphibii against Neptune.

Every Frisian — Friese as he calls himself — is
an agriculturist, and it is only in the villages
that the Frisian tongue is spoken. In the towns
of Ripe, Bredsted, and Husum, small as they are,
there is nothing but Danish and German. But
in all the little hamlets between, the well-built
old fashioned farm-houses, with gable-ends of vast
breadth, and massive thatched roofs that make

THE NORTH-FRISIANS. 177

two-thirds of the height of the house, and a
stork's nest on the chimney, and a cow-house at
the end, are Frisian ; and, if you can overhear
what they say amongst themselves, you find that,
without being English it is somewhat like it.
Woman is the word which sounds strangest to
both the German and the Dane, and, it is gene-
rally the first instance given of the peculiarity
of the Frisian language. " Why can't they speak
properly, and say Kone V says the Dane. " Weib
is the right word/' says the German. " Who ever
says woman V* cry both. The language has not
been reduced to writing ; indeed, the little that
has been done with it is highly discreditable to
the Sleswick-Holstein Church Establishment. It
is spoken by upwards of thirty-thousand indi-
viduals ; and when we remember that the whole
population of Denmark is less than that of Lon-
don and the suburbs, we see at once that a large
proportion of it has been less heeded in respect
to its spiritualities than the Gaels and Welsh of
Great Britain.

You may distinguish a Frisian parish as the
Eton grammar distinguishes nouns of the neuter
gender. It is -omne quod exit in -um; for so
end nine out of ten of the Frisian villages. Now,
throughout the whole length and breadth of
the Brekkelums, and Stadums, &c, that lie
along the coast, from Ripe north to Husitm

178 THE NORTH-FRISIANS.

south, there is not one church service that is per-
formed in Frisian, or half-a-dozen priests who
could perform it. No fraction of the Liturgy is
native ; nor has it ever been so. Danish there
is, and German there is ; German, too, of two
kinds — High and Low. The High German is
taught in the schools, and that well; so well,
that nowhere are the answers of the little chil-
dren more easily understood by such travellers
as are not over strong in their language than in
the Friese country. Nevertheless, it is but a
well-taught lesson ; and by no means excuses the
neglect of the native idiom.

As things are at present, this is, perhaps, all for
the best. The complaint lies against the original
neglect of the Frisian; and its gravaTnen is the
sad tale it so silently tells of previous centraliza-
tion— by which is meant arbitrary and unjustifi-
able oppression ; for at no distant time back, the
Frisians must have formed a very considerable
proportion of the Sleswickers, and, at the begin-
ning of the Historical period, the majority. And
yet it was not thought of Christianizing them
through their own tongue ; a tongue which, be-
cause it has never been systematically reduced to
writing, conscientious clergymen say is incapable
of being written. As if the Frisian of Friesland,
the Frisian of the south, had not been the lan-
guage of law and poetry for more than eight

THE NORTH-FRISIANS. 179

hundred years, and, as if it were a bit harder to
write, or print, the northern dialect of the same,
than it was for Scotland to have a literature.
For the tongue is no growth of yesterday. It
may, possibly, be as much older as any other
tongue of the Peninsula as the Welsh is older
than the English. That it is older than some
of them is certain. Amateur investigators of it
there are, of course. Outzen, the pastor of Brek-
kelum, was the father of them ; and honourable
mention is due to the present clergyman in Hack-
sted. As a general rule, however, the religion of
Sleswick has been centralized.

The literature, as far as it has been collected,
consists of a wedding-song of the fifteenth century,
to be found in Camerarius, with addition of, per-
haps, a dozen such morceaux as the following ap-
proaches to song, epigram, and ballad, respectively,
l

Lset foanimen kom ins jordt to meh,
Ik hev en blanken daaler to dek,
Di vsel ik deh vel zjonke,
Dse sjsellt du beh meh tjonke,

Lset foammen, &c.
2

Ik * vrel for tusend daaler ej
Dat ik het haad of vaas,
Den lup ik med den rump ombej
En vost ekj vger ik var.

This is so mixed up with Danish as scarcely to be Frisian.

180 THE NORTH-FRISIANS.

3
DER FREYER VOM HOLSTEIN.

Diar kam en skep bi Sudher Sioe

Me tri jung Fruers on di Floot.

Hokken wiar di fordeorst ?

Dit wiar Peter Rothgrun.

Hud saat hi sin spooren?

Fuar Hennerk Jerkens dtitir.

Hokken kam to Diiiir ?

Marrike sallef,

Me Kriik en Bekker on di jen hundh,

En guide Ring aur di udker hundh.

Jii nobdhight horn en sin Hinghst in,

Dod di Hingst Haaver und Peter wiin.

Toonkh Gott fuar des gud dei.

Al di Brid end bridmaaner of wei,

Butolter Marri en Peter alliining !

Jii look horn tin to Kest

En wildh horn nimmer muar mest.

Translated.
1.
Little woman come in the yard to me,
I have a white dollar for thee;
I will give it you
So that you think of me.

2.
I would not for a thousand dollars,
That my head were off,
Then should I run with my trunk,
And know (wiss) not where I was.

3.
There came a ship by the South Sea,
With three young wooers on the flood;
Who was the first ?

THE NORTH-FRISIANS. 181

That was Peter Rothgrun.

Where set he his tracts]

For Hennerk Jerken's door.

Who came to door ?

Mary-kin herself,

With a pitcher (crock) and beaker in the one hand,

A gold ring on the other hand.

She pressed him and his horse (to come) in,

Grave the horse oats and Peter wine.

Thank God for this good day !

All the brides and bridesmen out of the way !

Except Mary and Peter alone.

She locked him up in her box,

And never would miss him more.

This was what became of Peter; who is, per-
haps, the most legendary and heroic of the North-
Frisians — so that the development in this line
lies within a small compass.

The Isle of Nordstand is Low German (Platt-
Deutsch) in language, but in blood and pedigree
is Frisian; as, indeed, it was in speech up to A.D.
1610. Then came a great inundation, which de-
stroyed half the cattle of the island, and beggared
its inhabitants ; who were removed by their hard-
hearted lord the Count of Gottorp to the conti-
nent, and replaced by Low Germans.

The island of Pelvorm is in the same category
with Nordstand, the population being essentially
Frisian though the Piatt -Deutsch form of speech
has replaced the native dialect ; which was spoken
in both islands A.D. 1639.

182 THE NOKTH-FRISIANS.

Amrom partially preserves it ; though the Fri-
sian character is less marked than in —

Fdhr.— Here all the names which in English
would end in -ham, in High German in -heim, in
Low German in -hem, and in Danish in -by (as
Threking -ham, Mann-^eim, Am-hem, Wis -by)
take the form in -um, the vowel being changed
into u-, and the h- being omitted, as D\ms-wm,
Utters-um, Midi-urn, &c. — and this is a sure sign
of Frisian occupancy. In Fdhr, too, the language
is still current.

Of Sylt, the southern part has its names in the
Frisian form ; as Horn-urn, Mors-um, &c. The
northern half, however, is Danish, and the vil-
lages end in -by.

Such is the present area of North-Frisians ;
which we shall see lies north of that of the Nord-
albingians.

Nevertheless, the present writer believes that,
either there was no difference whatever between
the Angles and the Saxons, or that the Saxons
were North-Frisians.

Let us, for a while, allow the name Saxon to be
so little conclusive as to the ethnological position
of these same Nordalbingians as to leave the
question open.

The first fact that meets us is the existence of
the Frisians of Holland not only south of the
Elbe but south of Weser.

THE NORTH-FRISIANS. 183

East Friesland, as its name shews, is Frisian
also; although, with a few exceptional localities
in the very fenny districts, the language has been
replaced by the German.

Notwithstanding, too, its sanctity in the eyes
of the Angle worshipper of the Goddess Hertha,
Heligoland at the beginning of the Historical
period was not exactly Angle. It was what the
opposite coast was — Frisian. And Oldenburg,
was Frisian as well; indeed the whole area occu-
pied by the two great nations of antiquity — the
Frisii and Chauci — was neither Old-Saxon nor
Angle-Saxon It differed from each rather more
than they differed from each other, and, accord-
ingly, constituted a separate variety of the Ger-
man tongue.

So that there were, and are, two Frisian areas,
one extending no farther north than the Elbe,
and the other extending no farther south than
the Eyder.

And between these two lies that of the Nord-
albingians. This alone is primd facie evidence
of their being Frisian ; for we should certainly
arome that if Norfolk and Essex were English,
Suffolk was English also. Of course, it might
not be so: as intrusion and displacement might
have taken place ; but intrusion and displace-
ment are not to be too lightly and gratuitously
assumed. The Frisian of Oldenburg can be traced

184 THE NORTH-FRISIANS.

up to the Elbe, and the Frisian of Sleswick can
be followed down to the Eyder.

Eydersted, however, and Holstein are Low
German. Were they always so ? Of Eydersted,
Jacob Sax, himself a Low German of the district,
writes, A.D. 1610, that "the inhabitants besides
the Saxon, use their own extraordinary natural
speech, which is the same as the East and West
Frisian/'

For Ditmarsh the evidence is inconclusive. But
one or two names end in -um.

As early as A.D. 1452 the following inscription
which was found on a font in Pelvorm was un-
intelligible to the natives of Ditmarsh, who car-
ried it off — disse hirren Dope de have wi thbn
ewigen Ohnthonken mage lete, da schollen osse
Berrne in kressent warde" = "this here dip (font)
we have let be made as an everlasting remem-
brance : there shall our bairns be cristened in
it." Clemens translates this into the present
Frisian of Amrom, which runs thus — " thas hirr
dop di ha wi tun iwagen Unthonken mage leat,
thiar skell iis Biarner un krassent wurd/' Still,
Clemens thinks that the dress and domestic uten-
sils of the present Ditmarshers are more Frisian
than Platt-Deutsch. Now whatever the ancient
tongue of Ditmarsh may have been, it was not
the present Platt-Deutsch; yet, if it were Frisian,
it had become obsolete before A.D. 1452.

THE NORTH-FRISIANS. 185

That we are justified in assuming an original
continuity between the North and South Frisian
areas may readily be admitted. There are, of
course, reasonable objections against it — the want
of proof of Frisian character of the language of
Ditmarsh being the chief. Still, the principle
which would lead us to predicate of Suffolk what
we had previously predicated of Norfolk and
Essex, induces us to do the same with the district
in question, and to argue that if Eydersted, to
the North, and the parts between Bremen and
Cuxhaven, to the South, were Frisian, Ditmarsh,
which lay between them, was Frisian also.

But this may have been the case without the
Nordalbingians being Frisian; since an Angle
movement, northward and westward, may easily
have taken place in the sixth, seventh, or eighth
centuries ; in which case the Stormarii, Holtsati,
and Ditmarsi were Angle; intrusive, non-indi-
genous, and, perhaps, of mixed blood — but still
Angle.

I am not prepared, however, to go further at
present upon this point than to a repetition of
a previous statement, viz. : that if the Saxons
of Anglo-Saxon England were other than An-
gles under a different name, they were North-
Frisians.

Saxony and Saxon we have seen to be, for the
most part, general names for certain populations

186 THE NOEDALBINGIAXS.

of considerable magnitude, populations which
when investigated in detail have been Ostphali,
Angrarii, Stormarii, &c., &c. Ptolemy alone as-
signs to the word a specific power, and in Pto-
lemy alone is the country of the Saxons the
definite circumscribed area of a special population.
Ptolemy, as has been already shewn, places the
Saxons on the neck of the Chersonese to the north
of the Chauci of the Elbe, and to the East of the
Sigulones — there or thereabouts in Stormar. He
also gives them three of the islands off the coasts
of Holstein and Sleswick ; though it is uncertain
and unimportant which three he means. Hence,
the Saxons of Ptolemy, truly Nord-albingian, co-
incide in locality with the subsequent Stormarii,
the Sigulones being similarly related to the Hol-
satians. Yet neither the Saxon es nor the Sigu-
lones may have been the ancestors to their re-
spective successors, any more than the Durotriges,
or Iceni of England were the ancestors to the
Anglo-Saxons of Dorsetshire and Norfolk.

Before this point comes under consideration we
must ask a question already suggested as to the
Saxons of the ninth century. Were they Frisians
or Angles ?

Strongly impressed with the belief that no
third division of the Saxon section of the Ger-
mans beyond that represented by the Angles of
Hanover and the Old Saxons of Westphalia can

THE NORDALBINGIANS. 187

be shewn to have existed or need be assumed, I
have thus limited the problem, although the third
question as to the probability of their having been
something different from either may be raised. I
also believe that the Frisians reached Sleswick by
an extension of their frontier, tins being the rea-
son why the original continuity of their area is
assumed, — at the same time admitting the possi-
bility of their having come by sea, in which case
no such continuity is necessary. What we find
on the Eyder, and also on the Elbe may fairly be
supposed to have once been discoverable in the
intermediate country.

Assuming, then, an original continuity of the
Frisian area from Sleswick to the Elbe anterior
to the conquest of Ditmarsh and Holsatia by the
present Low German occupants to be a fair in-
ference from the present distribution of the North
Frisians, and the history of their known and re-
corded displacements, we may ask" how far it fol-
lows that this displacement was effected by the
ancestors of the present Holsteiners ; in other
words, how far it is certain that the present Hol-
steiners succeeded immediately to the Frisians.
There is a question here; since the continuity
may have been broken by a population which was
itself broken-up in its turn. It may have been
broken by Angle inroads even as early as the
time of Tacitus. If so, the order of succession

188 THE TERM SAXON.

would not be 1. Frisian. 2. Low German, but 1.
Frisian, 2. Angle or Anglo-Saxon, 3. Low German.

The Holsati, Stormarii, and Ditmarsi were,
most probably, Angle. That they were not the
ancestors of the present Low -Dutch is nearly
certain. The date is too early for this. It was
not till some time after the death of Charlemagne
that the spread of that section of the German
family reached Holstein. That they were not
Frisian is less certain, but it is inferred from the
manner in which they are mentioned by the na-
tive poet already quoted ; who, if he had consid-
ered the Frisians to have been sufficiently Saxon
to pass under that denomination, would have
carried his Nordalbingian Saxony as far as the
most northern boundary of the North-Frisians.

The evidence, then, is in favour of the Nordal-
bingians having been Anglo-Saxon in the ninth
century, and that under the name Stormarii,
Holsati, and Ditmarsi. Were they equally so in
the third, i.e., when Ptolemy wrote, and when
the names under which he noticed them were
Saxones and Sigulones? I should not like to
say this. The encroachment upon the Frisian
area — the continuity being assumed — may not
have begun thus early. Nay, even the north-
ward extension of the Frisian area may not have
begun. I should not even like to say positively
that the Saxons of Ptolemy were German at all.

THE TERM SAXON. 189

They may have been Slavonians — a continua-
tion of the Wagrian and Polabic populations of
Eastern Holstein and Lauenburg.

To say, too, that Ptolemy's term Saxon was a
native name would be hazardous. We can only
say that when we get definite information re-
specting the districts to which it applied it was not
so. It was no Nordalbingian name to the Storm-
arians, no Nordalbingian name to the Holsa-
tians, no Nordalbingian name to the men of
Ditmarsh, no Nordalbingian name to any of the
islanders. It was no native name with any spe-
cific import at all. It was a general name ap-
plied to the countries in question, as it was to
many others besides ; and it was the Franks who
applied it. It had been specific once ; but, when
it was so, no one knew who bore it, or who gave
it. It may have been Slavonic applied to Slavo-
nians, or German applied to Germans, or German
applied to Slavonians, or Slavonic applied to Ger-
mans. Which was it ?

Who bore it ? In the first instance the occu-
pants of the northern bank of the Elbe, and some
of the islands of the coast of Holstein and Sles-
wick ; men of the wooded districts of J9oZ£-satia,
whose timber gave them the means of building
ships, and whose situation on the coast developed
the habit of using them to the annoyance of their
neighbours. This is all that can be said.

190 THE TERM SAXON.

Who spread it abroad ? The Romans first, the
Franks afterwards. They it was who called by
the name of Saxon men who never so called
themselves, e.g., the Angrivarians, the Westpha-
lians, the Saxons of Upper Saxony.

How did the Romans get it ? From the Kelts
of Gaul and Britain.

How came the Kelts by it ? The usual answer
to this : that they got it from the Saxons them-
selves, the Saxons being, of course, Germans.
But the main object of the present chapter has
been to shew the extremely unsatisfactory nature
of the evidence of any Germans having so called
themselves. Assuredly, if they stopped at the
present point, the reasons for believing the name
to have been native would be eminently unsatis-
factory. The best fact would be in the language
of Beda, who, as we have seen, called the West-
phalians Old-Saxons. But Beda often allowed
himself to use the language of his authorities,
most of whom wrote in Latin, and some of whom
were Gauls or Britons.

But four fresh ones can be added —

1. There is the element -sex in the names Es-
sex, Wes-sex, Sussex, and Middle-sea?.

2. The name Sax-neot was that of a deity, whom
the Old Saxons, on their conversion to Christian-
ity, were compelled to foreswear. This gives us the
likelihood of its being the name of an eponymus.

THE TERM SAXON. 191

3. The story about nime\ eoivre Seaxas = take
your daggers, and the deduction from it, that
Saxons meant dagger-men, is of no great weight ;
with the present writer, at least. Still, as far as
it goes, it is something.

4. The Finlanders call the Germans Saxon.
The necessity of getting as far as we can into

the obscure problems connected with this word
is urgent. One part of England is more evi-
dently Saxon than another ; at least, it bears
certain outward and visible signs of Saxonism
which are wanting elsewhere. What are we to
say to this ? That ILs-sex is Saxon, and, as Saxon,
something notably different from Suffolk which
is Angle ? It may have been so ; yet the minutest
ethnology ever applied has failed in detecting the
differential. They have, indeed, been assumed,
and an unduly broad distinction between the
dialect of Angle and the dialects of Saxon origin
has been drawn ; but the distinction is unreal.
Angle iVor^/mmberland and Saxon Sussex differ
from each other, not because they are Angle and
Saxon, but because they are northern, and south-
ern counties. And so on throughout. The dif-
ference between Angle and Saxon Britain has
ever been assumed to be real, whereas it may be
but nominal.

Let us suppose it to be the latter, and Saxon
to have been the British name of the Angle —

192 THE TEEM SAXON.

nothing more. What do names like Sus-s&e, &c.,
indicate? Not that the population was less Angle
than elsewhere, but that it was more Roman or
British — an important distinction.

Again — certain Frisians are stated by Proco-
pius to have dwelt in Britain ; though Beda
makes no mention of them. Assume, however,
that the Saxons of the latter writer were the
Frisians of the former, and all is plain and clear.
But, then, they should be more unlike the Angles
than they can be shewn to have been.

But why refine upon these points at all ? Why,
when we admit the Nordalbingians to have been
Angle, demur to their having called themselves
Saxons? I do this because I cannot get over the
fact of the king who first decreed that his king-
dom should be called Angle-land having been no
Angle but a West-Saxon. That he should give
the native German name precedence over the
Roman and Keltic is likely ; but that, by call-
ing himself and his immediate subjects Saxon, he
should change the name to Angle, is as unlikely
as that a King of Prussia should propose that
all Germany should be known as Austria. Of
course, if the evidence in favour of the word
Saxon being native was of a certain degree of
cogency, we must take the preceding improba-
bility as we find it; but no such cogent evidence
can be found. Saxon is always a name that some

THE TERM SAXOX. 193

one may give to some one else, never one that he
necessarily bears himself.

Were the conquerors, then, of Sus-se^, &c,
other than Nordalbingian ? I do not say this ?
I only say that the evidence of their coming from
the special district of Holstein does not lie in
their name. Germans from the south of the Elbe
would — according to the preceding hypothesis
— have been equally Saxon in the eyes of the
degenerate Romans and the corrupted Britons
whom they conquered.

We are still dealing with the origin of the
name. The Franks and Romans diffused and
generalized, the Kelts suggested, it. That the
name was Keltic is undenied and undeniable.
The Welsh and Gaels know us to the present
moment as Saxons, and not as Englishmen. The
only doubt has been as to how far it was ex-
clusively Keltic — i. e., non-Germanic.

Will the supposition of its being Keltic account
for all the facts connected with it ? No. It will
not account for the Finlanders using it. The}r,
like the Kelts, call the Germans Saxon. This,
then, is a fresh condition to be satisfied. The
hypothesis which does this is, that the name
Saxo was applied by the Slavonians of the
Baltic as well as by Kelts of the coasts of Gaul
and Briton to the pirates of the neck of the
Chersonese, — the Slavonic designation being

194 THE TERM SAXOX.

adopted by the Finlanders just as the Keltic
was by the Romans.

And this supplies an argument in favour of the
name having been native, since a little considera-
tion will shew that, when two different nations
speak of a third by the same name, the jwvmA
facie evidence is in favour of the population to
whom it is applied by their neighbours applying
it to themselves also.

Yet this is no proof of its being German : nor
yet of the men of Wes-sex, &c, being Nordal-
bingian. All that we get from the British coun-
ties ending in -sex is, that in certain parts of
the island, the British name for certain German
pirates prevailed over the native, whereas, in
others, the native prevailed over the British.

If this be but a trifling conclusion in respect to
its positive results, it is one of some negative
value; inasmuch, as when we have shewn that
Angle and Saxon are, to a great extent, the same
names in different languages, we have rid our-
selves of the imaginary necessity of investigating
such imaginary differences as the difference of
name, at the first view, suggests. We have also
ascertained the historical import of the spread of
the names Saxon and Saxony. They spread, not
because certain Saxons originating in a district
no bigger than the county of Rutland, bodily took
possession of vast tracts of country in Germany,

THE TERM SAXON. 195

Britain, and Gaul, but because a great number
of Germans were called by the name of a small
tribe, just as the Hellenes of Thessaly, Attica, and
Peloponessus were called by the Romans, Greeks.
The true Grceci were a tribe of dimensions nearly
as small in respect to the Hellenes at large as
the Saxons of Ptolemy were to the Germans in
general (perhaps, indeed, they were not Hellenic
at all) ; yet it was the Grceci whom the Romans
identified with the Hellenes. No one, however,
believes that the Grseci extended themselves to
the extent of the term Grcecia. On the contrary,
every one admits that it was only the import of
the name which became enlarged. And this I
believe to have been the case with the word
Saxon.

Saxon, then, like Greek, was a general name.
Nevertheless, they were specific Saxons just as
they were specific Grwci. These were the Saxons
of Ptolemy. When that author wrote, I believe
them to have been either Frisian or Slavonians,
without saying which — Frisians, if we look for
their affinities to the south of the Elbe ; Slavo-
nians, if we seek them to the east of the Bille.

Between the time of Ptolemy and the end of
the fourth century, the name grew into import-
ance, and became a name of terror to the Ro-
mans, Gauls, and Britons, who applied it to the
northern Germans of the sea-board in general.

396 THE SAXONS.

The spread of the name along the sea-coast
began in the fourth century. Claudian alludes to
a naval victory over them

" maduerunt Saxone fuso

Orcades."

This gives them a robbing-ground as far north
as the Orkneys.

Ammianus notices their descent upon Gaul ;
and writes that in the reign of Valentinian " Gal-
licanos vero tractus Franci et Saxones iisdem con-
fines, quo quisque erumpere potuit, terra vel mari,
praedis acerbis incendiisque et captivorum fune-
ribus hominum violabant."

Again — " Valentinianus Saxones, gentem in
Oceani litoribus et paludibus inviis sitam, virtute
et agilitate terribilem, periculosam Romanis fini-
bus, eruptionem magna mole meditantes, in ipsis
Francorumfinibus oppressit." Oros. 7, 32.

A victory over the Saxones at Deuso-(Deutz,
opposite Cologne) is referred by more than one
of the later writers to the same reign.

The banks of the Loire are their next quarters,
Anjou being their chief locality, and their great
captain bearing a name of which the Latin form
was Adovacrius — "igitur Childericus Aurelianis
pugnas egit : Adovacrius vero cum Saxonibus An-
degavos venit . . . (Aegidio) defuncto Adovacrius
de Andegavo et aliis locis obsides accepit . . . Ve-
niente vero Adovacrio Andegavis, Childericus rex

THE SAXONS. 197

sequenti die advenit ; interemtoque Paulo Comite,
civitatem obtinuit. Greg. Tur. 2, 18; his itaque
gestis, inter Saxonies atque Romanos bellum ges-
tum est, sed Saxones terga vertentes multos de
suis, Romanis insequentibus, gladio reliquerunt :
insulae eorum cum multo populo interemto a
Francis captae atque subversae sunt . . . Adova-
crius cum Childerico foedus iniit, Alamannosque
subjugarunt id. 2, 19/'

Of Saxons who joined the Lombards in the in-
vasion of Italy we also hear from the same author
— " Post hsec Saxones qui cum Langobardis in
Italiam venerant, iterum prorumpunt in Gallias,
. . . scilicet ut a Sigiberto rege collecti in loco,
unde egressi fuerant, stabilirentur ... Hi vero ad
Sigibertum regem transeuntes, in locum, unde
prius egressi fuerant, stabiliti sunt/' 4, 43.

The best measure, however, of the Saxon pira-
cies is to be found in two terms, each of which has
always commanded the attention of investigators
— the names Saxones Bajocassini and Littus
Saxonicum.

1. Saxones Bajocassini or the Saxons of Bay -
eux are mentioned under that name by Gregory
of Tours (§. 27. 10. 9) ; and in a charter of Charles
the Bald there is the notice of a pagns in the
same district called Ot lingual. Zeuss reason-
ably suggests, as an emended reading, Otlinga;
in which case we have one of the numerous equi-

198 LITTUS SAXONICUM.

valents of those local names which, in the modern

English, end in -ing, and in the Anglo-Saxon, in

-ingas — Palling, Notting, Horbling, Billing —

iEsclingas, Gillingas, &c, &c. Who were these?

When we hear of Bayeux again, i. e., in the tenth

century it is alluded to as the most Scandinavian

or Norse town of Normandy, the only one indeed

where the Norse language and customs were de-
cs o

cidedly retained. These Saxons, then, may have
been Norsemen. But they may equally easily
have been Angles, or Frisians ; since a Norse con-
quest in the tenth is perfectly compatible with a
German in the fifth century ; and, in Britain,
such was actually the case.

2. The Littus Saxonicum is a term in the J¥o-
titia Dignitatum, which appears in three places.
In chapter xxxvi, where we have the details of
the sea-coast of Gaul, under the denomination of
the Tractus Armoricanus, the first officer —

[§. 1.] Sub dispositione viri spectabilis Ducis
Tractus Armoricani et Nervicani —

Is—

[a] [1.] Tribunus Cohortis Primge Novae Ar-
moricse Grannona in Littore Saxonico.

b. Cap. xxxvii. [§. 1.] Sub Dispositione viri
spectabilis Ducis Belgicse Secundse —

[1.] Equites Dalmataa Marcis in Littore Sax-
onico.

c. These but give us a Littus Saxonicum in

LITTUS SAXONICUM. 199

Gaul. The 25th chapter supplies one for Britain,
and that with considerable detail —

[§. 1.] Sub dispositione viri spectabilis comitis
Littoris Saxonici per Britanniam :

[1.] Propositus Numeri Fortensium Othonse.

[2.] Prsepositus Militum Tungricanorum Du-
bris, &c.

It is not necessary to go through the de-
tail. It is sufficient to say that we find stations
at the following undoubted localities — Brancas-
ter, Yarmouth, Reculvers, Richborough, Dover,
Lymne, and the mouth of the Adur. Putting
this together it is safe to say that the whole line
of coast from the Wash to the Southampton water
was, in the reign of Honorius, if not earlier, a
Littus Saxonicum — whatever may have been the
import of that term.

Looking over the preceding details we find how
hazardous it would be to predicate concerning
the several populations designated as Saxons any
single statement beyond that of their having been
pirates from the north-German sea-board. Some
may have been Angle, some Frisian, some Platt-
Deutsch, some Scandinavian. Nay, the name
Adovacrius = Odoacer = Ottocar, may have be-
longed to a Slavonian captain, whatever may have
been the country of the crew.

200

THE ANGLES OF GERMANY.

CHAPTER X.

THE ANGLES OF GERMANY — IMPERFECT RECONSTRUCTION OF THEIR
HISTORY — THEIR HEROIC AGE. — BEOWULF. — CONQUEST OF AN-
GLEN — ANECDOTE FROM PROCOPIUS. — THEIR REDUCTION UNDEB
THE CARLOVINGIAN DYNASTY. — THE ANGLES OF THURINGIA.

As the previous chapter has shewn that a
Saxon population, considered simply as such, and
without reference to the particular fact of its date,
locality, and similar important circumstances, may
be in any or no ethnological relation to the Angle
(i.e., absolutely Angle under a Keltic name, or,
on the other hand, as little Angle as the Sla-
vonians), the attempt at the reconstruction of
the history of all the Germanic conquerors of
Britain during the period of their occupation of
Germany, although, perhaps, not impracticable
as the subject of a special investigation, and as
the matter of an elaborate monograph, must, in a
sketch like the present, be limited to that of the
unequivocal and undoubted Angles — this mean-
ing those who are not only Angle in reality,
but whose actions are described under the name
of Angle. It is only when this is the case that we
can be sure of our men. A Saxon, as aforesaid,
may be anything, provided he be but a pirate.
The greater part, too, of the actions of the Saxons

THE ANGLES OF GERMANY. 201

can be shewn to have been effected by the Old-
Saxons rather than the Anglo-Saxons, and even
by Franks and Frisians. Indeed, it is not too much
to assert that, with the exception of the invasion
of Britain and Sleswick, there is no recorded act
of any Saxon population which cannot be more
fairly attributed to some of the other allied sec-
tions of the Germanic stock than to the Angle.
That this was the case with the Saxons of the
Gallic frontier — the Saxons that, in the earlier
periods of their history, came into collision with
Julian, and, in the later ones, with Charlemagne,
is undoubted ; and, that it was also the case with
the earlier Saxon pirates of the coasts of Gaul
and Britain is likely — though I do not press this
point. What I am considering now is the un-
equivocal history of the Angles of Germany under
their own proper name. I have said that it is
fragmentary. It is more than this. The frag-
ments themselves are heterogeneous.

An Englishman, representing as he does the
insular Angles, and looking to the part that they
have played in the world, may, with either pride
or regret, as the case may be, say that on their
native soil of Germany, the Angle history is next
to a non-entity. It is like that of the Majiars
of Asia. What our ancestors did at home before
they became the Englishmen of Great Britain
may have been of any amount of importance, or,

202 BEOWULF.

of any amount of insignificance. They were deeds
without a record. As to our own collateral re-
lations, they suffered rather than acted. They
have, indeed, a history, but it is a history neither
full nor glorious.

The poem of Beowulf, an extract from Beda,
and a similar extract from Procopius constitute
the notices that continue the history — if so it
can be called — of the Angles from the time of
Ptolemy to the beginning of the seventh cen-
tury, and even these are doubtful in their inter-
pretation.

Beowulf is a poem in the Anglo-Saxon lan-
guage, and, in the alliterative metre of the Anglo-
Saxon compositions in general, of unknown date
and authorship, of upwards of six thousand lines ;
a poem which, although preserved in England, and
and in a form adapted to English hearers sub-
sequent to the conversion of our island to Chris-
tianity, is essentially pagan and German — pagan
in respect to its superstitions and machinery, and
German in respect to the scene of action ; for in
Germany, and not in England, are all its actions
achieved. This being the case, it cannot but tell
us something of the ancient Germans ; and, as the
hero is an Angle, the ancient Germans of whom
this something is told, are, more or less, the Angle
ancestors of the English in their original conti-
nental home.

BEOWULF. 203

Much more than this it is unsafe to say. The
composition itself is a poem — a romance — an epic.
This is against the historical value of its subject-
matter. Then, it has taken its present form
under the hands of a Christian. This is against
its value as cotemporaneous evidence. Thirdly,
it has the character, to no small extent, not only
of a rhapsody, but of a rhapsody of which the
elements are heterogeneous. This is against its
value as a piece of Anglicism.

Nick and Grendel — the old Nick of the pre-
sent English, and Grendel — probably, the Geru-
thus of Saxo Grammaticus — are the chief super-
naturals, demons of the swamp and fen. These
best localize the legends in which they appear ;
for which most parts of Hanover and the Cimbric
Chersonesus suit indifferently, the Frisian por-
tions pre-eminently, well. The more exalted my-
thology of Woden, Thor, and Balder, so generally
considered to have been all-pervading in Germany
and Scandinavia, finds no place in Beowulf. Our
Devil and the Devil's Dam are rough analogues
of Nick and Grendel.

Heort is the great palatial hall of Hro^gar,
the kingly personage of the poem, Beowulf being
the hero. It stands in some part of the Cimbric
Chersonese. Seeing in this, as a word, only
another form of the name Hartz, I also see in it
a proof of the rhapsodical character of the poem,

204 BEOWULF.

and the heterogeneous character of its
ments.

An episode, of which Signmnd is the hero,
gives us a narrative in which we have, in an
altered form, and an obscure outline, a portion
of the Nibelungen-Lied cycle — an element from
the Rhine.

Another gives us an adventure apparently
without a hero, or rather an adventure whose
hero has no proper name, but only a designating
adjective. Considering the indistinct shape which
all legends take in Beowulf, I cannot but think
that the individual whose name stands in the
text as Stearc heart, and in the translation as
Strong-heart, is neither more nor less than the
great Danish hero Starcather, of a not unlike
legend in Saxo.

Danes, Geats, Frisians, and Sweas (Swedes),
are the populations with whom the Angles are
most brought in contact ; and the following ex-
tract shews the manner of their mention. The
parties, here, are Jutish Danes and Frisians.

1. " Hroftgar's poet after the mead-bench must excite joy in the
hall, concerning Finn's descendants, when the expedition came
upon them ; Healfdene's hero, Hnaif the Scylding, was doomed
to fall in Friesland. Hildeburh had at least no cause to praise
the fidelity of the Jutes ; guiltlessly was she deprived at the
war-game of her beloved sons and brothers ; one after another
they fell wounded with javelins; that was a mournful lady.
Not in vain did Hoce's daughter mourn their death, after morn-

BEOWULF. 205

ing came, when she under the heaven might behold the slaugh-
terer of her son, where he before possessed the most of earthly
joys : war took away all Finn's thanes, except only a few, so
that he might not on the .place of meeting gain any thing by
fighting against Hengest, nor defend in war his wretched rem-
nant against the king's thane ; but they offered him conditions,
that they would give up to him entirely a second palace, a hall,
and throne, so that they should halve the power with the sons
of the Jutes, and at the gifts of treasure every day Folcwalda's
son should honour the Danes, the troops of Hengest should
serve them with rings, with hoarded treasures of solid gold,
even as much as he would furnish the race of Frisians in the
beer-hall. There they confirmed on both sides a fast treaty of
peace. Finn strongly, undisputingly, engaged by oath to Hen-
gest, that he would graciously maintain the poor survivors ac-
cording to the judgment of his Witan, that there no man, either
by word or work, should break the peace, nor through hostile
machinations ever recall the quarrel, although they, deprived of
their prince, must follow the slaughterer of him that gave them
rings, since they were so compelled : if, then, any one of the
Frisians with insolent speech should make allusion to the deadly
feud, that then the edge of the sword should avenge it. The
oath was completed, and heaped up gold was borne from the
hoard of the warlike Scyldings : the best of warriors was ready
upon the pile ; at the pile was easy to be seen the mail-shirt
coloured with gore, the hog of gold, the boar hard as iron, many
a noble crippled with wounds : some fell upon the dead. Then
at Hnsef's pile Hildeburh commanded her own son to be in-
volved in flames, to burn his body, and to place him on the pile,
wretchedly iipon his shoulder the lady mourned ; she lamented
with songs ; the warrior mounted the pile ; the greatest of death-
fires whirled; the welkin sounded before the mound; the lnail-
hoods melted ; the gates of the wounds burst open ; the loathly
bite of the body, when the blood sprang forth ; the flame,
greediest of spirits, devoured all those whom there death took
away : of both the people was the glory departed.

Thence the warriors set out to visit their dwellings, deprived

206 BEOWULF.

of friends, to see Friesland, their homes and lofty city ; Hengest
yet, during the deadly-coloured winter, dwelt with Finn, boldly,
without casting of lots he cultivated the land, although he might
drive tipon the sea the ship with the ringed prow; the deep
boiled with storms, wan against the wind, winter locked the
wave with a chain of ice, until the second year came to the
dwellings ; so doth yet, that which eternally, happily provideth
weather gloriously bright. When the winter was departed, and
the bosom of the earth was fair, the wanderer set out to explore,
the stranger from his dwellings. He thought the more of ven-
geance than of his departing over the sea, if he might bring to
pass a hostile meeting, since he inwardly remembered the sons
of the Jutes. Thus he avoided not death when HunlaTs de-
scendant plunged into his bosom the flame of war, the best of
swords ; therefore were among the Jutes, known by the edge of
the sword, what warriors bold of spirit Finn afterwards fell in
with, savage sword-slaughter at his own dwelling ; since GuftlaT
and Osldf after the sea-journey mourned the sorrow, the grim
onset : they avenged a part of their loss ; nor might the cunning
of mood refrain in his bosom, when his hall was surrounded
with the men of his foes. Finn also was slain. The king amidst
his band, and the queen was taken ; the warriors of the Scyld-
ings bore to their ships all the household wealth of the mighty
king which they could find in Finn's dwelling, the jewels and
carved gems ; they over the sea carried the lordly lady to the
Danes — led her to their people. The lay was sung, the song of
the glee-man, the joke rose again, the noise from the benches
grew loud, cupbearers gave the wine from wondrous vessels."

Hengist appears here as a Jute. Another En-
glish name, that of Offa, occurs in the following :

2. " Hseredh's daughter; she was nevertheless not condescend-
ing, nor too liberal of gifts, of hoarded treasures, to the people of
the Gedts; the violent queen of the people exercised violence of
mood, a terrible crime; no one of the dear comrades dared to
venture upon that beast, save her wedded lord, who daily looked

BEOWULF. 207

upon her with his eyes, but she allotted to him appointed bonds
of slaughter, — twisted with hands : soon after, after the clutch of
hands, was the matter settled with the knife, so that the excel-
lent sword must apportion the affair, must make known the fatal
evil : such is no womanly custom for a lady to accomplish, comely
though she be, that the weaver of peace should pursue for his
life, should follow with anger a dear man: that indeed disgusted
Hemming's kinsman. Others said, while drinking the ale, that
she had committed less mighty mischief, less crafty malice, since
she was first given, surrounded with gold, to the young warrior,
the noble beast : since by her father's counsel she sought, in a
journey over the fallow flood, the palace of Offa, where she after-
wards well on her throne in good repute living, enjoyed the living
creations, and held high love with the prince of men, the best
between two seas of all mankind, of the whole race of men, so
far as I have heard : for Offa the spear-bold warrior was far re-
nowned both for his liberalities and his wars, in wisdom he held
his native inheritance, when he the sad warrior sprang for the
assistance of men, he the kinsman of Hemming, the nephew of
Garmund, mighty in warfare."

Beowulf approaches his end ; the ceremonies of
his funeral are described in detail, the political
complications created by his death are alluded
to:—

3. "Now is the joy-giver of the people of the Westerns, the Lord
of the GeaUs, fast on the death-bed, he dwelleth in fatal rest : by
him lieth his deadly foe, sick with seax-wounds; with his sword
he could not by any means work a wound upon the wretch.
Wiglaf, Wihstan's son, sitteth over Bedwulf, one warrior over the
other deprived of life holdeth sorrowfully ward of good and
evil : now may the people expect a time of war, as soon as the
fall of the king becomes published among the Franks and Fri-
sians : the feud was established, fierce against the Hugas, after
Hygelac came sailing with a fleet to Friesland, where his foes
humbled him from his war, boldly they went with a superior

208 BEOWULF.

force, so that the warrior must bow, he fell in battle, nor did the
chieftain give treasure to his valiant comrades : ever since was
peace with the sea-wicings denied us : nor do I expect peace or
fidelity from Sweeden, but it was widely known that Ongenthedw
deprived of life Heetheyn the Hrethling, beside Hrefna-wood
when for their pride the war-Scylfings first sought the people of
the Gedts. Soon did the prudent father of Ohthere, old and ter-
rible, give him a blow with the hand ; he deprived the sea-king
of the troop of maidens, the old man took the old virgin, hung
round with gold, the mother of Onela and Ohthere, and then
pursued the homicides until they escaped with difficulty into
Hrefnes-holt, deprived of their Lord : then with a mighty force
did he beset those that the sword had left, weary with their
wounds : shame did he often threaten to the wretched race, the
whole night long: he said that he in the morning would take
them with the edges of the sword, some he would hang on the
gallowses, for his sport : comfort came again to the sad of mood,
with early day, since they perceived the horn and trumpets of
Hygelac, when the good prince came upon their track with the
power of his people."

" For him then did the people of the Gedts prepare xipon the
earth a funeral pile, strong, hung round with helmets, with war-
boards and bright Byrnies, as he had requested: weeping the
heroes then laid down, in the midst their dear lord; then began
the warriors to awake upon the hill the mightiest of bale fires ;
the wood-smoke rose aloft, dark from the foe of wood ; noisily
it went, mingled with weeping: the mixture of the wind lay on
till it had broken the bonehouse, hot in his breast : sad in mind,
sorry of mood they moaned the death of their lord: — The people
of the Westerns wrought then a mound over the sea, it was high
and broad, easy to behold by the sailors over the waves, and dur-
ing ten days they built up the beacon of the war-renowned, the
mightiest of fires; they surrounded it with a wall, in the most
honourable manner that wise men could devise it : they put into
the mound rings and bright gems, — all such ornaments as the
fierce-minded men had before taken from the hoard ; they suf-
fered the earth to hold the treasure of warriors, gold on the

BEOWULF. 209

the sand, there it yet remaineth as useless to men as it was of old.
Then round the mound rode a troop of beasts of war, of nobles,
twelve in all: they would speak about the king, they would call
him to mind, they would relate the song of words, they would
themselves speak : they praised his valour, and his deeds of bra-
very they judged with praise, even as it is fitting that a man
should extol his friendly Lord, should love him in his soul, when
he must depart from the body to become valueless. Thus the
people of the Gedts, his domestic comrades, mourned their dear
Lord; they said that he was of the kings of the world, the mild-
est and gentlest of men, the most gracious to his people, and the
most jealous of glory."

That Norse, Frisian, Angle, and other Germanic
elements are combined in this poem is certain;
and, looking to the extent to which Beowulf, the
hero, besides other points of indistinctness in re-
spect to his personality, is Geat as well as Angle,
I cannot but suspect an incorporation of some Sla-
vonic and Lithuanic ones as well. Finn, too, as
a hero, not of the Laps and Finlanders (to whom
he would be the proper eponymus), but of the
Frisians, creates a further complication.

Hro^gar, too, the Dane or Jute, has a name
inconveniently unlike that of the more historical
Radiger who will soon come under notice.

The chief fact we get from Beowulf is, as is ge-
nerally the case with early poems, one in the his-
tory of Fiction ; and, to guard against disparaging-
such facts as these, let us remember that the his-
tory of Fiction is the history of the Commerce of
Ideas.

210 THE DISTRICT OF

Now Beowulf tells us that, at the time of its
composition, at latest, and, probably, much ear-
lier, there was a certain interchange of legend
or history between the Danes, Swedes, Lom-
bards, Franks, Angles, Frisians, and Geats. We
may say, then, that the Angli had an Heroic
Age.

In respect to their historic epoch, a well-known
notice in Beda, freely adopted by most of his
after-comers, deduces the Angles from that part
of Germany which he calls Angulus, between the
provinces of the Jutes and Saxons, and which up
to his own time remained a waste — patria quae
Angulus dicitur, et ab eo tempore usque hodie
desertus inter provincias Jutarum et Saxonum
perhibetur.

The Saxon Chronicle simply translates this.
Alfred strengthens it, writing that there "the
English dwelt before they came hither." — i. e., to
England.

Ethel weard speaks of " Anglia vetus, sita inter
Saxones et Giotos, habens oppidum capitale, quod
sermone Saxonico Sleswic nuncupatur, seeundu
vero Danos, Hathaby."

A well-known locality in the Duchy of SI
wick supplies the commentary on these texts,
triangular block of land, about the size of the
county of Middlesex, is bounded on two of its
sides by the Slie and the Firth of Flensburg, and

i

ANGLEN. 211

on tlie third by the road from that town to Sles-
wick.

Many writers think that the Angles should be
placed here ; and, thinking this, maintain that no
population except that of the Angles or some
closely allied tribe has a claim to be considered
as the early occupants of Holstein and Sleswick
They overlook, however, the important fact that
Ptolemy, who places the Angili in a locality far
south of the parts in question, places, in those
parts, populations which he separates from his
Angili. They also overlook the still more im-
portant fact that the only populations earlier than
the present of which definite traces can be disco-
vered in either Holstein or Sleswick, are the Fri-
sians and the Slavonians — the Frisians on the
west, and the Slavonians on the east.

In another point of view this district is import-
ant, although the line of criticism upon which it
has its bearing is gradually becoming obsolete.
When the direct influence of the Danes and Nor-
wegians upon the language of Britain was less
recognised than it is now, it was by no means
uncommon to explain such Scandinavian words
as occurred by the assumption that they were
Angle as opposed to Saxon, the Angle being the
most Danish of all the proper German dialects —
transitional, perhaps, to the Teutonic and Scandi-
navian divisions of the so-called Gothic stock.

212 THE DISTRICT OF

This was a line of criticism difficult to refute ;
since the advocate of the Angle origin of Danish
words might fairly argue that it was not enough
to shew that a word was Scandinavian. It must
also be shewn to have been non-existent in the
North-German dialects. This brought in the pro-
verbial difficulty of proving a negative assertion.
Hence, the district of Anglen and Beda's state-
ment concerning it are important.

Now, at the present moment, this district of
Anglen is just as Angle or English as the rest of
Germany — that is, next to not at all. It is Low
German, tinctured with Danish ; having once
been more Danish still, as is shewn by the
geographical names ending in -by, -skov, an<
-gaard.

The only piece of truly cotemporary eviden<
in Beda is the statement of its being a waste whei
he wrote, and this is better explained by supposing
it to have been a March, or Debateable Land, b(
tween the Germanic and Danish occupants of Sles-
wick, than by the notion that it was left empfr
by the exodus of its occupants to Great Britain.
The deduction of the Angli from an improbably
small area, on the wrong side of the Peninsula,
must be looked upon as an inference under the
garb of a tradition. Such I believe it to have
been; freely, however, admitted that if Anglen
poured forth upon England even half the Angles

ANGLEN. 213

that England contained, it was likely enough to
have been most effectually emptied.

At one time I went further than the mere de-
nial of Anglen being the original home of the
Angles in the exclusive manner that Beda so evi-
dently considers it, and looked upon the word as
a mere translation of the word Angulus — since
the area in question is certainly one of the nooks
and corners of the Peninsula. But the fact of
there being one or two small outlying districts,
retaining (I believe) certain privileges, beyond
the area bounded by the Slie the Firth of Flens-
burg and the road to Sleswick, in the parts about
Leek and Bredsted, and on the North-Frisian
frontier, has modified this view, and inclined me
to the notion that the Anglen districts of Sles-
wick were really Angle — though Angle only in the
way that Britain was Angle, i. e., from the effect
of an invasion from Hanover. If so, although we
fail in finding in Sleswick the mother-country of
the English, we get a detail in the history of the
Angles of Germany instead — this being that cer-
tain Angles, probably at the time they were
reducing Britain, may have turned their faces
northwards, and effected settlements in certain
parts of Sleswick, having, previously, reached
the Trave. Hence they achieved a small mari-
time conquest on the coast of the Baltic, just as
they effected certain large ones on the shores of

214 THE VAKNI OF

Britain. Why do I suppose this to have been by
sea? Because, when true history begins, what-
ever the men of Anglen in Sleswick may have
been, the intermediate parts of Holstein are
Wagrian. The settlement, then, in Anglen, is
just a detail in the naval history of the Angles,
during the period of their rise and progress — that
is, if it be anything Angle at all.

A notice of Procopius now finds place. An
Angle princess betrothed to Radiger, prince of
the Varni, is deserted by her promised husband
for Theodechild, his father's widow, and avenges
herself by sailing for the mouth of the Rhine
with a large fleet, conquering her undervalue^
forgiving him as women are likely, and dismiss-
ing her rival, as they are sure to do in such cases.
To deny " all historical foundation to this tale/'
writes Mr. Kemble,* "would perhaps be carrying
scepticism to an unreasonable extent. Yet the most
superficial examination proves that in all its de-
tails, at least, it is devoid of accuracy. The period
during which the events described must be placed,
is between the years 534 and 547 ; and it is very
certain that the Yarni were not settled at that
time where Procopius has placed them ; on that
locality we can only look for Saxons. It is hardly
necessary to say that a fleet of four hundred ships
and an army of one hundred thousand Angles,

* Saxons in England, i. 24.

peocopius. 215

led by a woman, are not data upon which we
could implicitly rely in calculating either the
political or military power of any English prin-
cipality at the commencement of the sixth cen-
tury, or that ships capable of carrying two hun-
dred-and-fifty men each, had hardly been launched
at that time from any port in England. Still I
am not altogether disposed to deny the possibility
of predatory expeditions from the settled parts
of the island adjoining the eastern coasts/'

From this criticism I only differ in thinking
that, instead of Procopius having mistaken Saxons
for Yarni, he has mistaken the Elbe for the
Rhine.

It is a point of some uncertainty, but of no
great importance to ascertain whether the Angle
subjects of the insulted but forgiveful princess
were from Britain or from Hanover — islanders
already in a state of reaction against their con-
tinental fatherland, or simply Angles of the Elbe.
The accounts of Procopius respecting both coun-
tries are eminently obscure and contradictory.
It is only certain that as early as the ninth
century there were continental writers who at-
tributed to the Germans of Britain movements
from the Island to the Continent as far back from
their own time as the fifth century. Nay, ]ater
still, there were some historians who wholly
reversed the order of Anglo-Saxon migration,

216

THE ANGLES OF GERMANY.

and deduced the true Fatherland Germans from
England.

And now the history of the rise and progress
of the Angles on the soil of Germany ends. Even
if it can be increased there is but modicum of in-
formation. Yet we could scarcely expect more.
On the contrary, why should not the Angles
have shared the total obscurity of the Nuithones,
Sigulones, and others ? What population amongst
those with which they came in contact could
have recorded their alliances, their victories, or
their defeats? Not the Frisians, who were un-
lettered as long as they were Pagan, and Pagan
until the tenth century. Not the Slavonians,
whose spiritual and intellectual darkness was
equal. Not the Romans, for reasons already
given. There only remained the Gauls and Bri-
tons. But, unfortunately, in the eyes of the
Gauls and Britons, although all Angles were
Saxons, all Saxons were not Angles — so that the
proportion of proper Angle history which we have
in the Gallic and British accounts of the Saxons
cannot be determined.

The history of the Saxons of the continent has
been stated to have been the history of the Old-
Saxons. And up to the time of Beda, and about
half a century later, such was the case. Hence,
the rule is as follows — where we hear of Saxon
actions by sea, the actors may be Old-Saxons,

THE ANGLES OF GERMANY. 217

Angles, Frisians, Scandinavians, or Slavonians,
and where we hear of actions on the Terra Firma
of Germany, and also in the times anterior to B. c.
800, the actors are Old-Saxons rather than Anglo-
Saxons. In this case, except in Britain, we have
little or no Angle history under the name of
Saxon ; and, as there is equally little under the
name of Angle, we have, as has been already seen,
next to no Angle history at all — i. e.} in Germany.
But with the reign of Charlemagne the criti-
cism changes. The Saxon history, even in Ger-
many, becomes Anglo-Saxon, as well as Old-
Saxon, and it may be that the events are pretty
equally distributed between the two divisions.
The reason is clear. The arms of Southern and
Middle Europe have penetrated to the parts be-
yond the Weser, and it only requires the Angles
to be described under their own proper name (in-
stead of that of Saxon) for us to have the mate-
rials of an average history. It is a sickening and
revolting history, and a history that few nations
but the English can afford. Throughout the
whole length and breadth of Germany there is
not one village, hamlet, or family which can shew
definite signs of descent from the continental an-
cestors of the Angles of England. There is not a
man, woman, or child who can say, / have pure
Angle blood in my veins. In no nook or corner
can dialect or sub- dialect of the most provincial

218 THE ANGLES OF GEKMANY.

form of the German speech be found which shall
have a similar pedigree with the English. The
Angles of the Continent are either exterminated
or undistinguishably mixed up with the other
Germans in proportions more or less large, and
in combinations more or less heterogeneous. And
the history of the Conquest and Conversion of the
Saxons by Charlemagne is the history of this ex-
tinction. It is this that makes it so impossible
to argue backwards from the present state of the
Angles of Germany to an earlier one, and so to
reconstruct their history. They have no present
state. Neither have the 0 ^-Saxons — their next
of kin. Of the Frisians only, the next nearest,
there are still fragments ; for, although the enemy
of the Old-Saxons and the Anglo-Saxons was the
enemy of the Frisians also, he was not equally
their exterminator. They may or may not have
been braver than the Angles and Old-Saxons.
They certainly occupied a more impracticable
country. To this period — the period of their re-
duction— the Angli and Werini of Thuringia are
attributed. They may, indeed, have got there as
they did to Sleswick, by conquest, and at an ear-
lier period. If so, there was an alliance. They
were, however, more probably transplanted.

RECAPITULATIONS. 219

CHAPTER XL

RECAPITULATIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. — PROPOSITIONS RESPECTING
THE KELTIC CHARACTER OF THE ORIGINAL OCCUPANTS OP
BRITAIN, ETC. — THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE ANCIENT BRITONS
AND THE ANCIENT GAULS, ETC. — THE SCOTCH GAELS. — THE
PICTS. — THE DATE OF THE GERMANIC INVASIONS. — THE NAMES
ANGLE AND SAXON.

Of the British Isles at the time of the Angle
invasion we have effected a sketch, rather than
a picture ; a sketch indistinct in outline, and with
several of its details almost invisible. Never-
theless, it is a sketch in which some of the points
are pretty clear. Germans of one or more varie-
ties, Kelts either Gaelic or British, Picts who may
be anything, Romans and Roman Legionaries are
the chief elements. These we have had to dis-
tribute in Time and Space as we best could. We
have also had, as we best could, to investigate
their relations to each other.

Let us look back upon what has been attempt-
ed in this respect.

And first in respect to our data. The state-
ments of the early authors, and the value which
is due to them, have formed the subject of a se-
parate chapter ;* and it is hoped, that, without
any undue disparagement, they have been shewn

* Chapter vii.

220 ORIGIN OF

to be valid only when they are opposed to a very
small amount of either conflicting facts or a
priori improbabilities. I also lay but little
stress upon them when they assert a negative,
and equally little when their apparent testi-
mony may be reduced to an inference. Their ab-
solute testimony, however, must be taken as we
find it.

Partly for the sake of recapitulation, and part-
ly with the view to give a further investigation
to certain questions which could not well be con-
sidered until certain preliminary facts had been
laid before the reader, the more important in-
ferences are put in form of the following pro-
positions, to some of which a commentary is
attached.

I.

The British Isles were peopled from the Keltic
portion of the continent originally and exclu-
sively.

This implies an objection to the doctrine of
any pre-keltic population, and to the inferences
deduced from certain real or supposed peculiari-
ties in the shape of the skulls from the tumuli
of the Stone period. (See pp. 26 — 27.)

II.

The Gaels cannot be derived from the Britons,

THE BRITONS. 221

nor the Britons from the Gaels ; on the contrary,
each branch must have been developed from some
common stock.

This rests upon the differences between the
British and Gaelic languages. (See Chapter V.)

Ill

Of this common stock the British branch, at
least, must have been developed on the continent.
(See Chapter VI)

This, of course, assumes that the Galli of Gaul
were not derived from Britain; a view which
has never been adopted, and which probably has
so little to recommend it as to make its investi-
gation superfluous.

The British language of Britain and the Gaelic
of Gaul would not have been so much alike as
they were had they developed themselves sepa-
rately, each after their own fashion.

This last proposition depends, however, to a
great extent, upon the following, viz., that —

IY.

The similarity betiveen the ancient language
of Gaul and the ancient language of Britain is
measured by that between the present Welsh and
the A rmorican of Brittany.

The arguments of pp. 86 — 87, resting as they
do upon the close relationship between the an-

222 THE ARMORICAXS OF

cient language of Gaul* and the British — would
be materially impaired by any thing which sub-
tracted from the evidence in favour of that rela-
tionship.

Now the present Welsh and the present Ar-
morican of Britain are languages that are very
nearly mutually intelligible.

And as the Armorican represents the ancient
Gallic, and the Welsh the ancient British, the affi-
nity between the two old tongues must have
been, at least, equal to that between the two new
ones.

But what if the Armorican do not represent
the ancient Gallic, but be merely so much Welsh
or Cornish transferred to Britanny in the fifth
century? In such a case the argument is mate-
rially weakened.

Now there is a certain amount of statements
to this very effect, viz., to the Welsh origin of the
Armorican. Let them be examined.

Gildas, who mentions the rebellion of Maximus,
says nothing of any British migration to Brit-
tany.

Nennius gives us an account beset with inac-
curacies, being to the effect that Maximus the

* Here is one out of the thousand-and-one inconveniences aris-
ing from our present philological nomenclature. I am contrasting
two languages with each other : yet their names are as like as
Gallic and Gaelic.

BRITTANY. 223

seventh imperator in Britain, left the island with
all the British soldiers it contained, killed Gratian
King of Rome, and held rule over all Europe ;
that he would not dismiss the soldiers who went
with him, but gave them lands in Armorica or
the country over-sea (Ar-mor-) ; that, then and
there, these soldiers of Maximus slaughtered all
the males, married the females, and cut out their
tongues lest the children should learn the lan-
guage of their parents instead of that of their
conquerors. For this reason we call them Lete-
wicion, or, half- silent (semi-tacentes). Thus was
Brittany peopled, and Britain emptied; so that
strangers took possession of it.

Beda's account is equally unsatisfactory. The
Britons were the first who came into the island,
and they came from Armorica. It was from Ar-
morica that they came, it was in the south of
England that they landed, and it was they who
gave the name to the island.

Now there is an error somewhere — if not in
Beda, in Nennius ; if not in Nennius, in Beda.

Traditions are uniform, inferences vary; and
when Nennius brings his Armoricans from Corn-
wall, and Beda his Cornishmen from Armorica,
we have a presumption against a tradition being
the basis of their statements. The real basis was
the existence of the British language on both
sides of the Channel, a fact which being differ-

224

THE GAELS.

ently interpreted by the different writers gave us
two separate and contradictory inferences — each
legitimate, and each (for want of further data)
wrong.

The present similarity, then, between the Welsh
and Armorican remains unaffected by the state-
ments of Beda and Nennius ; and the common-
sense inference as to the latter language repre-
senting the ancient Gallic takes its course.

The Belgce were Kelts of the British branch.

This implies an objection to all the arguments
in favour of a Germanic population occupant of
Britain anterior to the Christian era, which are
based on the name Belgw. (See pp. 61 — 75.)

VI.

The Gaelic branch of the Keltic stock may have
been developed in either the British Isles or on
the continent. — (Chapter V.)

The following list of words in Professor New-
man's Regal Rome, shewing that a remarkable
class of words in Latin were Keltic rather than
native and Gaelic rather than Welsh, and which
was unpublished when the fifth chapter was
written, favours the doctrine of the Gaels having
been continental as well as insular to an extent
for which I was previously unprepared : —

THE GAELS. 225

ENGLISH. LATIN. GAELIC.

Arms arma arm.

Weapon telum tailm.

Helmet galea galia.

Shield scutum sgiath.

Arroio sagitta saigkead.

Coat of Mail . . lorica liureach.

Spoils spolia spuill.

Necklace .... monile fail-muineil.

Point cuspis cusp.

Spear quiris * coir.

It also favours Llmyd's hypothesis rather than
the Hibernian. (See pp. 88-89.)

VII.

The earliest ethnology of Scotland was that the
earliest Britons, i. e., either British as opposed to
Gaelic, or Gaelic which, subsequently, became as
British as South Britain itself.

This means that the present Gaels were not
aboriginal to the Scotch Highlands, except in
the sense that they were aboriginal to Kent or
Wales. (See pp. 88-89.)

VIII.

The present Scotch Gaels are of Irish origin.

These two propositions go together ; involving
an objection to the so-called "Caledonian hy-
pothesis " (p. 89), with which they are incompa-
tible. Nevertheless, anything confirmatory of

* Sabine — Sive quod hasta quiris priscis est dicta Sabinis. — Ovid.

Q

226 THE SCOTCH GAELS.

that hypothesis would, pro tanto, invalidate the
present.

The chief facts upon which this doctrine rest
are —

1st. The absence of the term sliabh, the cur-
rent Gaelic form for mountain, throughout Scot-
land— even in the Gaelic parts of it.

2nd. The great extent to which the forms in
aber are found northwards (see p. 81). These
occur so far beyond the Pict area, that, al-
though so good a writer as Mr. Kemble has
allowed himself to make it commensurate with
the British, and although his list of compounds
of aber has been placed in the present writer's
chapter on the Picts, as an illustration of a cer-
tain line of criticism, the inference that they were
Britons in North-Briton other than Pict is highly
probable. Hence in the northern parts, at least,
the word aber was used not because the country
was Pict, but because it was British.

It is well known that the doctrine is, in respect
to its results, the current one ; from which it dif-
fers in resting on ethnological inference, rather
than on a piece of history.

The historical account is to the effect, that the
Scots of Scotland were originally Irish, so that
Ireland was the true and proper Scotland. 11
was Ireland where the Scots dwelt when the
Picts came from Scythia, Ireland whence the

THE SCOTCH GAELS. 227

Picts took their Scottish wives ; and, finally,
Ireland that gave its present Gaelic population
to North Britain. Under a leader named Reuda
the Scots of Ireland sailed across the Irish Sea,
penetrated far into the Firth of Clyde, settled
themselves to the north of the Picts, drove that
nation southwards, multiplied their kind in the
Highlands, and called themselves Dalriads (Dal-
reudini), since Reuda was the name of their
chief, and daal meant part The point where the
Scots landed was just where the British and Pict
areas joined, the parts about Alcluith or Dum-
barton— "procedente autem tempore, Britannia
post Brittones et Pictos, tertiam Scottorum natio-
nem in Pictorum parte recepit, qui duce Reuda
de Hibernia progressi vel amicitia vel ferro sibi-
met inter eos sedes quas hactenus habent, vindica-
runt ; a quo videlicet duce usque hodie dalreudini
vocantur, nam eorum lingua 'daal' partem signi-
ficat.' — Hist. Eccl. i. 1.

To agree with Beda in making the Gaels of
Scotland intrusive, but to demur to his evidence,
is, apparently, to substitute a bad reason for
good one without affecting the conclusion, i.e.,
gratuitously. We shall soon see how far this is
the case.

At present, I remark that all Scotland may
have been British without having been wholly
Pict ; and that —

228 THE PICTS.

The parts of Scotland which were not Gaelic at
the beginning of the Historical period and have
not been so since, never were.*

IX.

The P ids may or may not have been the British
Kelts of Scotland : this depending upon the ex-
tent to which the gloss penn fahel is a word
belonging to the Pict tongue, or only a word be-
longing to a language spoken within the Pict
territory.

Why should it not be Pict ? "Why disturb the
inference ? disturb the inference by suggesting
that they may be Pict only as man or woman
are Welsh, i. e., words other than Pict, but words
used in a Pict area just as English is spoken in
the Welsh town of Swansea ? I admit that, if
we look only to the plain and straight-forward
meaning of Beda, this refinement is unnecessary.
There are, however, certain complications.

* This contravenes an opinion to which I have elsewhei
committed myself (Man and his Migrations, pp. 161-162). Ac
ing upon the doctrine that Ireland must be considered to ha-\
been peopled from the nearest part of the nearest land of a moi
continental character than itself, unless reason could be shewn
to the contrary, I ignored the statement of Beda altogether, and
peopled Ireland from the parts about the Mull of Cantyre. Tl
present change of opinion has arisen out of no change in tl
valuation of Beda's statement. The extent to which the fori
in aber are found in Scotland, and the extent to which the nan
sliabh (with a few others; is wanting, are the real reasons.

THE DALRIADIC CONQUEST. 229

Baal=part, is suspiciously like the German
theil, the English deal, the Anglo-Saxon dcel, the
Norse del, dal ; indeed, it is a wonder that Beda
took it for a foreign word. Hence, gloss for gloss,
it is nearly as good evidence for the Picts being
German or Norse as penn fahel is for their being
Briton. I say nearly, because it is expressly
stated to have been Scotch. But this it is not.
What, then, is our next best explanation? To
suppose it to have been a word used by a popu-
lation other than Scotch, but on the Scotch fron-
tier. Now this population was Pict.

X.

The Dalriad Conquest may or may not have
been real. Being real, it may or may not have
given origin to the Gaelic population of Scot-
land.

This means that Beda's evidence, being excep-
tionable, may be wholly false — except so far as it
is an inference from the existence of Gaels in both
Ireland and the Western Highlands.

Even if true as to the fact, its ethnological im-
portance may be over-valued, since the investi-
gation of the origin of the Scotch Gaels inquires,
not whether any Irish Scots ever appropriated
any part of Scotland, but whether such an appro-
priation were the one which accounts for the
Gaelic population of North Britain. This is the

230

EARLY GERMANS IN

difference between a conquest and the conquest-
a difference too often overlooked.

I should not like to say that the Picts were
not Scandinavians, a point which will be treated
more fully in the thirteenth chapter. Hence —

XL

Scandinavian settlements may have taken
place as early as the earliest notices of the Picts.

In this case the lines would be — Norway, North
Scotland, the Hebrides, Ireland and Galloway.

XII.

Germanic elements existed in Britain in the
reign of Diocletian.

The notices of the Franks in Kent and Middle-
sex suggest this. (See p. 96.)

XIII.

The Littus Saxonicum must have been ravaged
by Germans as early as the reign of Honorius.

This must be admitted even if we construe
Saxonicum as ravaged by Saxons, rather than
occupied by Saxons — a construction which is so
little natural, that I doubt whether it would ever
have been resorted to if the language of Gildas
had not been supposed to preclude the notion of
any Saxon invasion anterior to A.D. 449. We
have seen, however, how little that writer was in

BRITAIN. 231

the position to make a negative statement, i. e., to
state, not only that Hengest and Horsa came
over in a given year, but that none of their
countrymen ever did so in a previous one.

XIV.

No distinction need be drawn between the
Angles and the Saxons of Great Britain on the
strength of the difference of name.

This, however, by no means implies that they
are to be identified. It merely means that the
name goes for but little ; and that the difference
of origin between the different portions of the
Germanic population of Britain is to be deter-
mined by the facts of each particular case.

232

THE JUTES OF

CHAPTER XII.

ANALYSIS OF THE GERMANIC POPULATIONS OF ENGLAND. — THE
JUTE ELEMENT QUESTIONABLE. — FRISIAN ELEMENTS PROBABLE.
— OTHER GERMAN ELEMENTS, HOW FAR PROBABLE. — FORMS
IN -ING.

The present chapter will examine the extent
to which certain Germanic populations mentioned
by Beda and other writers as having taken part
in the Anglo-Saxon invasions of Great Britain
actually did so ; it will also inquire whether
certain other populations not so mentioned may
not, nevertheless, have joined in those inva-
sions, although their share in them has been un-
recorded.

The Jutes. — Did Jutes, rather than Angles or
any other allied population, effect the conquest
and occupancy of parts of Hampshire and the
Isle of Wight as they are said to have done ?

Let us suppose the case of an American archaeo-
logist, in the absence of any authentic history,
reasoning about the origin of the three popula-
tions of Plymouth, New Jersey, and Portsmouth,
three populations lying within no great distance
of each other. He knows that, as a general rule,
they are to be deduced from England ; and he
studies the map of England accordingly. On

THE ISLE OF WIGHT AND HAMPSHIRE. 233

the south-coast he finds a Jersey, which he rea-
sonably infers is the Old Jersey, the mother-
country of the Americans of the New. He also
finds a Plymouth, from which he draws the same
equally reasonable inference. Lastly, he sees a
town named Portsmouth — and here he repeats
his reasoning — reasoning which is eminently logi-
cal, cogent, and apparently conclusive. It passes
without challenge or objection, and the origin
of the three populations gradually loses its in-
ferential character, and assumes that of a fact
founded upon evidence. A writer who adopts
his views, perhaps the very writer himself, more-
or less unconsciously, next believes that his doc-
trine has an historical rather than a logical basis,
and it passes for a fact founded upon records, or
at least on tradition. In such a case a sentence
like the following might easily be written —
"they" (viz., the populations of New Jersey, Ply-
mouth, and Portsmouth) "came from three of
the more powerful populations of England, i. e.,
those of Jersey, Plymouth, and Portsmouth.
From those of Jersey came the men of New
Jersey, from those of Plymouth the men of Ply-
mouth, and from those of Portsmouth the men
of the parts so-called." I say that such a sen-
tence might be written, might pass as a fact, and
whether fact or not, would contain an argument
so legitimate as to stand against nine hundred

234 THE JUTES OF

and ninety-nine objections out of a thousand.
Yet the thousandth might set it aside, since cer-
tain facts might have been overlooked.

What if the name of an original Indian tribe
had been Jersey (or some name like it), or Ports-
mouth, or Plymouth? The chances, I admit, are
against such an occurrence. But what if it really
happened? It cannot be denied that it would
materially shake the inference. Nay more, how-
ever much that inference took the guise of a
tradition or record, it would shake the state-
ment of the author who made it, however unex-
ceptionable.

Still the doctrine might be correct, and not
only correct, but capable of having its correctness
demonstrated. Let the name in question be the
one last mentioned — New Jersey. Let the Old
Jersey people of England be like those of Ply-
mouth, but different from them in some de-
finite characteristics. Let those characteristics
reappear in the New Jersey men of America. In
such a case, the exceptions taken to the statement
from the present existence of an aboriginal In-
dian population called Nujersi (for such we
will suppose the name to be) would fall to the
ground.

But what if no ethnological acuteness, no ety-
mological sagacity, no minute analysis of names,
traditions, or dialect had ever succeeded in de-

THE ISLE OF WIGHT AND HAMPSHIKE. 235

tecting such differentiae, so that, despite of the
endeavours of learned antiquarians, the men of
New Jersey could not be shewn to differ from
those of Plymouth and Portsmouth, whilst all the
while the Old Jersey men did so differ. In such
a case the objection that was originally taken
from the previous name of the Indian tribe would
stand valid.

Mutatis mutandis, this applies to Beda's state-
ment concerning the Jutes — the statement being
as follows: — "Advenerant autem de tribus Ger-
manise populis fortioribus, id est Saxonibus, An-
glis, Jutis. De Jutarum origine sunt Gantuarii
et Vectuarii, hoc est ea gens, quae Yectam tenet
insulam, et ea, quae usque hodie in provincia Occi-
dentalium Saxonum Jutarum natio nominatur,
posita contra ipsam insulam Vectam. De Sax-
onibus, id est ea regione, quae nunc antiquo-
rum Saxonum cognominatur, venere Orientates
Saxones, Meridiani Saxones, Occidui Saxones.
Porro de Anglis, hoc est de ilia patria, quae An-
gulus dicitur et ab eo tempore usque hodie ma-
nere desertus inter provincias Jutarum et Saxo-
num perhibetur, Orientates Angli, Mediterranei
Angli, Mercii, tota Nordhumbrorum progenies, id
est illarum gentium, quae ad boream Humbri flu-
minis inhabitant, ceterique Anglorum populi sunt
orti/ — Beda 1, 15.

Angles, Saxons, and Jutes occurred within

236

THE JUTES OF

comparatively narrow limits in Great Britain,
and, within equally narrow limits, Angles, Saxons,
and Jutes occurred in Northern Germany and
Denmark.

The Angles of England undoubtedly came from
Germany; so did the Saxons.

But did the Jutes ? Let us look to the differ-
ent forms their name took; and also to those of
that of the Jutes of Jutland ; and, when we have
seen that occasionally they both took the same,
let us ask whether the objection which has just
been suggested against the supposed American
speculations do not apply to the real English
one.

The Jutes of England were called Jutna-cyn,
or the Jute-kin; their locality was the Isle of
Wight, and from that island they were called
WHit-ware, ~Pec£-ienses or Vecti-coldd. Beda him-
self identifies these two populations, saying that
the Vect-uarii ( Wiht-tvare), " who held the Isle
of Wight, were of Jute origin." And, lest this
be insufficient, both the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
and Alfred repeat (or rather translate) the asser-
tion : — -,

Of Jotum comon Cantware
and Wihtware, \>set is seo
niaeia'S, be nti eardeb on Wiht,
and that cynn on West-Sexum
"Se man gyt hart Jutnacynn.

Of Jutes came the Kent-
people, and the Wiht-people,
that is the race which now
dwells in Wiht, and that tribe
amongst the West-Saxons which
is yet called the Jute tribe.

THE ISLE OF WIGHT AND HAMPSHIRE. 237

Comon di of brym folcum
J?a strangestan Germanise ; t>£et
of Seaxurn, and of Angle, and
of Geatum ; of Geatum fruman
sindon Cant-wsere and Wiht-
ssetan, hset is seo J>eod se Wiht
J>at ealond on eardaft.

Came they of three folk the
strongest of Germany ; that of
the Saxons, and of Angle, and
of the Geats. Of the Geats ori-
ginally are the Kent-people and
the Wiht-settlers, that is the
people which Wiht the Island
live on.

Now this name Wiht never came from the
Jutes at all; since it existed three hundred years
before their supposed advent, as the word Vectis
= the Isle of Wight; and was a British, rather than
a German, term

And the Wiht-ware were, partially at least, no
Germans but Britons, and as Britons, rather than
as Jutlanders, did they stand in contrast with
the Saxons of the neighbourhood. The proof of
this is in Asser, who says that Alfred's mother
" Osburg nominabatur, religiosa nimium faBmina,
Nobilis ingenio, nobilis et genere ; quae erat filia
Oslac — qui Oslac Gothus erat natione, ortus enim
erat de Gothis et Jutis ; de semine scilicit Stuf et
Wihtgar — qui accepta potestate Vectis Insulae —
paucos Britannos, ejusdem insulse accolas, quos in
ea in venire potuerant, in loco qui dicitur Gwiti-
garabibvgh occiderunt, caeteri enim accolse ejusdem
insulse ante sunt occisi aut exules auiugerant." —
Asserius, De Gestis Alfredi Regis.

So that Gwit-garaburg is now Caris-brook, and

238 THE JUTES OF

Caris-brook in the time of Stuf and Wihtgar, was
the last stronghold of the Gwitce, Vitce, Vecticolce
or Vectienses, who were simply Britons confounded
with Jut-ce.

Who then were the Jutnacyn, who lived in
Hampshire, as opposed to those of Carisbrook in
the Isle of Wight ? I imagine, without pressing
the point, or supposing that anything important
depends on it, that they were the Exules of
Asser, the remnants who escaped from the exter-
minating swords of Stuf and Wihtgar, in their
conquest of the island. That they existed in the
time of Beda is true ; not however as Danes from
Jutland, but as Britains from the land of the
Wiht-ivare.

I do not profess to say why there was the
double form Vit, and Jut — nor should I have
identified them myself. It is not I who have
done this, but Beda and Alfred ; as must be ad-
mitted by any one who cannot shew a difference
between the Wiht-ware and the Jutna-cyn — both
authors deriving each from the Jutes.

Neither can I say how Jutland came to be
called V r it-land ; I can only say that the change
is no assumption. In a document of A.D. 952 we
find it so called — Dania Cismarina quam V it-
land appellant. — See Zeuss in v.

As stated above, all this falls to the ground if
any separate substantive reasons for considering

KENT. 231)

the Wild-ware to be Jutlanders can be shewn.
But such are wanting. If either they or the Jut-
nacyn of the opposite coast of Hants were Danes
in the time of Alfred and Beda, where were the
signs of their origin. Not in their language ;
since no mention is made of the Danish in Beda's
list of British tongues. Not in the names of geo-
graphical localities. Neither -ware, nor -burgh,
(in Gwith -wara -burg) are Danish terms. Where
are such signs now? The Danish termination for
towns and villages is -by. There is no such end-
ing in either Hampshire or the Isle of Wight.

Did Jutes rather than Angles or any other
allied population effect the conquest and occu-
pancy of Kent, as they are said to have done ?

It is only the Jute origin of the Jutnacyn or
Wihtware of Hants that the preceding reasoning
impugns. The Jute origin of the Cantware, or
people of Kent, is a separate question.

I only suspect error here : the reasons for doing
so being partly of a positive, partly of a negative
nature : —

1. As far as traditions are worth anything, they
make Hengist a Frisian hero.

2. No name of any Kentish King is Danish.

3. No Danish forms for geographical localities
occur in the county.

That the Kentish population has certain pecu-
liarities is highly probable; and it is also pro-

240

FRISIANS, ETC.

bable that similar peculiarities on the part of tl
population of Hants brought the two within the
same category. And hence came the extension of
the Jute hypothesis to the Cantware.

Were there Frisians in England ? — The pre-
sumption is in favour of the affirmative ; since the
Frisians were eminently the occupiers of the Ger-
man sea-coast.

Again —

1. A native tradition makes Hengist a Frisian.

2. Procopius writes that " three numerous na-
tions occupy Brittia — the Angili, the Phrissones,
and the Britons." — B. G. iv. 20.

3. In one of Alfred's engagements against the
Danes the vessels are said to have been " shapen
neither like the Frisian nor the Danish/' and that
there were killed in the engagement " Wulf heard
the Frisian, and iEbbe the Frisian, arid iEthelhere
the Frisian — and of all the men, Frisians and
English, seventy-two/' — Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,
A.D. 897.

In Mr. Kemble's " Saxons in England," a fresh
instrument of criticism is exhibited. A local
name like that of the present town of Kettering
is in Anglo-Saxon Cytringas. Here the -as is
the sign of the plural number, and the -ing- a
sort of Anglo-Saxon patronymic, or, (if this ex-
pression be exceptional) a Gentile form. Hence,
Cytr-ing-as means the Gytrings, and is the name

FORMS IN -ING. 241

of a community — i.e., it is a political or social
rather than a geographical term.

Now nearly two hundred such terms occur in
the Anglo-Saxon Chartas as names of places.

But besides the simple form in -ing (Anglo-
Saxon -ing-as) there is a series of compounds in
-wic, -ham, -weorft, -tun, -hurst, &c., as Bi\\-ing,
Billing-/iam, BiWmg-hay, Billing-froroi^, Billing-
-ford, Billing-£o?i, Billing-^;?/, Billings-(/aie, Billing
hurst, &c., most of which it is safe to say mean
the -hurst, the -town, &c, of the Billings. Now —

1. The distribution of these forms, either simple
or compound, over the counties of England is as
follows. There are in —

York, 127 ; Norfolk, 97 ; Lincolnshire, 76 ; Sus-
sex, 68 ; Kent, 60 ; Suffolk, 56 ; Essex, 48 ; North-
umberland, 48 ; Gloucester, 46 ; Somerset, 45 ;
Northampton, 35 ; Shropshire, 34 ; Hants, 33 ;
Oxford, 31 ; Warwick, 31 ; Lancashire, 26 ; Che-
shire, 25 ; Wilts, 25 ; Devon, 24 ; Bedford, 22 ;
Berks, 22 ; Nottingham, 22 ; Cambridge, 21 ;
Leicester, 19 ; Durham, 19 ; Stafford, 19 ; Surrey,
18 ; Bucks, 17 ; Huntingdon, 16 ; Hereford, 15 ;.
Derby, 14 ; Worcester, 13 ; Middlesex, 12 ; Hert-
ford, 10 ; Cumberland, 6 ; Rutland, 4 ; West-
moreland, 2 ; Cornwall, 2 ; Monmouth, 0.

In valuing this list the size of the county
must be borne in mind. Subject to this qualifi-
cation, the proportion of the forms in -ing, is a

242

FORMS IN -ING.

measure of the Germanism of the population. It
is at the maximum in Kent and Norfolk, and at
the minimum in Cornwall and Monmouth.

2. The simple forms (e.g., Billings) as opposed
to the compounds (Billing-/^;?/) bear the following
proportions

21

25

4

to

In Essex as
„ Kent .
„ Middlesex
„ Hertford
„ Sussex.
„ Surrey
„ Berks .
„ Norfolk
„ Suffolk
„ Hants
„ Hunts .
„ Lincolnshire
„ Yorkshire
„ Bedfordshire
„ Lancashire

Now the simple

24

5

r>

•21
15
3
6
7
18
4
4

48

60

12
10

68

IS
22

In Northumberl. as 4
Nottinghamsh. 3
Northamptonsh. 3
Derbyshire . 2
Dorsetshire . 2
Cambridgeshire 2

to

Oxfordshire .
Glostershire
Bucks . .
Leicestershire
Devonshire .
Wilts . . .
Warwickshire
Shropshire .
Somersetshire

56

16

33

76
127

22

26
forms Mr. Kemble considers
to have been the names of the older and more
original settlements with the " further possibility
of the settlements distinguished by the addition
of -helm, -wic, and so forth, to the original names,
having being filial settlements, or, as it were,
colonies, from them." — Saxons in England, i. 479.
3. The same names appear in different locali-
ties, e.g. :

iEscings in Essex, Somerset, Sussex.
Alings „ Kent, Dorset, Devon, Lincoln.

FOKMS IN -ING. 2-43

Ardings in Sussex, Berks, Norths.
Arlings „ Devon, Gloster, Sussex.
Banings „ Herts, Kent, Lincoln, Salop.
Beddings „ Norfolk, Suffolk, Surrey, Sussex,
Isle of Wight, &c.

This leads to the doctrine that either one com-
munity was deduced from another, or that both
were deduced from a third ; this being more
especially the case when —

4. The name is found in Germany as well as in
Britain. This happens with —

The Walsingas inferred from Walsing-ham,

„ Harlingas „ Harliag,

„ Brentingas „ Brenting-hj,

„ Scyldingas „ SJcelding,

„ Scylfingas „ Shilving-ton

„ Ardingas „ Arding-worth.

„ Heardingas „ Harding-ham.

„ Baningas „ Banning-ham.

„ Tliyringas „ Thoring-ton, &c.

If all these names are to be found not only
in Germany but in the Angle part of it, the cur-
rent opinion as to the homogeneous character of
the Anglo-Saxon population stands undisturbed.
Each, however, is found beyond the Angle area,
and so far as this is the case, we have an argu-
ment in favour of our early population having
been slightly heterogeneous.

244 THE SCANDINAVIANS.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE SCANDINAVIANS. — FORMS IN -BY: THEIR IMPORT AND DIS-
TRIBUTION.— DANES OF LINCOLNSHIRE, ETC. ; OF EAST ANGLIA ;
OF SCOTLAND J OF THE ISLE OF MAN ; OF LANCASHIRE AND
CHESHIRE ; OF PEMBROKESHIRE. — NORWEGIANS OF NORTHUM-
BERLAND, SCOTLAND, AND IRELAND, AND ISLE OF MAN. — FRI-
SIAN FORMS IN YORKSHIRE. — BOGY. — OLD SCRATCH. THE PICTS

POSSIBLY SCANDINAVIAN. — THE NORMANS.

In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle we find the fol-
lowing notices: — "This year King Beorhtric took
A.D. to wife Eadburg, King OfiV s daughter ; and
787. in his days first came three ships of North-
men, out of Hseretha-land. And then the reeve
rode to the place, and would have driven them to
the king's town, because he knew not who they
were; and they there slew him. These were the
first ships of Danish-men which sought the land
of the English race/' Again : —
A#D. "This year dire forewarnings came over
793. the land of the North-humbrians, and mise-
rably terrified the people ; these were excessive
whirlwinds, and lightnings ; and fiery dragons
were seen flying in the air. A great famine soon
followed these tokens : and a little after that, in
the same year, on the 6th of the Ides of Janu-
ary, the ravaging of heathen men lamentably
destroyed God's church at Lindisfarn, through

THE SCANDINAVIANS. 245

rapine and slaughter. And Siega died on the
8th of the Kalends of March."

After this the notices of the formidable Danes
become numerous and important. But it is not
in the pages of history that the influence of their
invasions is to be found. The provincial dia-
lects of the British Isles, the local names in the
map of Europe, the traditions and (in some
cases) the pedigrees of the older families are the
best sources.

If we study the local names of Germany and
Scandanavia, we shall find that when we get
North of the Eyder a change takes place. In
Sleswick the compound names of places begin to
end in -gaard, -shov, and -by; in -by most espe-
cially, as Oster-by, Wis-by, Gammel-%, Nor-by,
&c. In Jutland the forms in -by attain their
maximum. They prevail in the islands. They
prevail in Sweden. They are rare (a fact of great
importance) in Norway. In Germany they are
either non-existent or accidental. In respect to
its meaning, by = town, village, settlement ; and
By-en = the town, is a term by which Christiania
or Copenhagen — the metropoles of Norway and
Denmark — are designated. Such forms as Kir-
ton, Nor-ftm, and New-ton in German, would in
Danish, be Kir-by, Nor-by, New-by.

Now the distribution of the forms in -by over
the British Isles has the same import as its distri-

246

FORMS IN -BY.

bution in Germany and Scandinavia. It indi-
cates a Danish as opposed to a German occupancy.
Again — the Anglo-Saxon forms are Church and
Ship, as in Dxm-church and Ship-ton ; whereas
the Danish are Kirk and Skip, as in Orms-kirk
and Skip-ton. The distribution of these forms
over the British Isles closely coincides with that
of the compounds in -by.

With these preliminaries we will follow the
lines which are marked out by the occurrence of
the places in -by; beginning at a point on the
coast of Lincolnshire, about half-way between the
entrance to the Wash and the mouth of the Hum-
ber ; the direction being south and south-west.
Ander-by Creek, Wi\loug-by Hills, Mum-by, Or-
by, Ir-by, Firs-by, Reves-%, Conings-%, Ewer-fo/,
Asg&r-by* Span-fr?/, Dows-by, Duns-%, Hacon-
by* Tlmrl-by, Carl-%* take us into Rutlandshire,
where we find only Gvun-by and Hoo-by. Neither
are they numerous in Northamptonshire ; Canons'
Ash-by, Cates-%, and Bad-% giving us the out-
line of the South-eastern parts of their area. For
Huntingdon, Cambridge, and Beds, nothing ends
in -by, whilst the other forms are in sh, and ch
— as Charlton, Shelton, Chesterton rather than
Carlton, Skelton, Casterton. Leicestershire

is

* These are Danish forms throughout — Asgar-, Hacon-, and
Carl- being as little Anglo-Saxon as -by. Carl-by in Anglo-Saxon
would be Cliarl-ton.

FORMS IN -BY. 247

full of the form, as may be seen by looking at
the parts about Melton, along the valleys of
the Wreak and Soar ; but as we approach War-
wickshire they decrease, and there is none south
of Hug-by. More than this, the form changes sud-
denly, and three miles below the last named town
we have Dun-church and Co&ch-b&tch. Tradi-
tion, too, indicates the existence of an old March
or Debateable Land ; for south of Hug-by begins
the scene of the deeds of Guy Earl of Warwick,
the slayer of the Dun Cow. Probably, too, the
Bevis of Hampton was a similar* North-amp-
£o7i-shire hero, notwithstanding the claim of the
town of Southampton.

The line now takes a direction northwards and
passes through Bretby (on the Trent) to Derby,
Leicestershire being wholly included. And here
the frontier of the forest which originally covered
the coal-district seems to have been the western
limit to the Danish encroachments, Rotherham,
Sheffield, and Leeds lying beyond, but with the
greater part of Nottinghamshire and a large part
of Derby within, it. In Yorkshire the East
Riding is Danish, and the North to a great ex-
tent; indeed the western feeders of the Ouse
seem to have been followed up to their head-
waters, and the watershed of England to have
been crossed. This gives the numerous -by 8

* Nortk-awra-ton-shire.

248

FORMS IN -BY.

in Cumberland and Westmoreland* — Kirk-%,
Apple-%, &c.

So much for the very irregular and remarkable
outline of the area of the forms in -by on its
southern and western sides. In the north-east it
nearly coincides with the valley of the Tees —
nearly but not quite ; since, in Durham, we have
Ra-%, Sela-&2/, and Hum-by. The derivatives of
castra, on the other hand, are in -ch-; e.g., Eb-
cA-ester, (7Aester-le-street, Lanc/iester (Lan-caster).
In Northumberland there are none.

I look upon this as the one large main Danish
area of Great Britain, its occupants having been
deduced from a series of primary settlements on
the Humber. It coincides chiefly with the water-
system of the Trent, makes Lincolnshire, and the
East Riding of Yorkshire the mother-countries,
and suggests the notions that, as compared with
the Humber, the rivers of the Wash, and the
river Tees were unimportant. The oldest and
most thoroughly Danish town was Grimsby. The
settlements were generally small. I infer this
from the extent to which the names are com-
pounded of -by and a noun in the genitive case
singula!* (Candel-s-by, Grim-s-%, &c). Danish
names such as Thorold, Thurkill, Orme, &c, are
eminently common in Lincolnshire ; and, at Grims-

* Also Caster-ton = Chester-ton. The numerous forms in
thicaithe are shewn by Mr. Worsaae to be Norse.

FORMS IN -BY. 249

by, a vestige of the famous Danish hero Havelok
is still preserved in Havelok-street. On the other
hand, the number of Danish idioms in the pro-
vincial dialects is by no means proportionate to
the preponderance of the forms in -by. In Lin-
colnshire it is but small, though larger in York-
shire and Cumberland.

The extent to which the rivers which fall in
the Wash are not characterized by the presence of
forms in -by is remarkable. The Witham and
Welland alone (and they but partially) have bys
on their banks. Again —

Just above Yarmouth, between the Yare, the
North River and the sea, is a remarkable congrega-
tion of forms in -by. These are more numerous in
this little tract than the rest of Norfolk, Suffolk,
and Essex together — Mault-%, Orms-by* (doubly
Danish), ~H.emes-by, &c. This may indicate either
a settlement direct from Scandinavia,' or a second-
ary settlement from Lincolnshire.

However doubtful this may be, it is safe to
attribute the -bys on the West of England, to the
Danes of Cumberland and Westmoreland, the
Danes of the Valley of the Eden. These spread —

A. Northwards, following either the coast of
Galloway or the water-system of the Annan,
Locker-6^6, &c. —

* Doubly Danish : the Anglo-Saxon form of Orm being
Worm.

250 FORMS IN -BY.

B. Westwards into the Isle of Man —

C. Southwards into —

a. Cheshire, Lancashire, and Carnarvonshire
(Orms-he&d), always, however, within a moder-
ate distance of the sea — Horn-by, Orms-kirk*
Whit-%, Ire-by, Hels-%, &c. —

b. Pembrokeshire ; where in ~H.&ver-ford andMil-
ford the element ford is equivalent to the Danish
Fiord, and the Scotch Firth, and translates the
Latin word sinus — not vadum. Guard- in Fish-
guard is Danish also ; as are Ten-by and Harold-
stone.

Such is the distribution of one branch of the
Scandinavians, viz. : those from Jutland, the
Danish Isles, and (perhaps) the South of Sweden.
That of the Norwegians of Norway is different.
Shetland, the Orkneys, Caithness, and Suther-
land, the Hebrides, and Ireland, form the line of
invasion here. In Man the two branches met —
the Danish from the east, and the Norwegian from
the north and east.

The numerous details respecting the Scandina-
vians in Britain are to be found in Mr. Worsaae's
" Danes and Northmen " and, besides this, the
proof of the distinction just drawn between the

* Doubly Scandinavian : the Anglo-Saxon form would be
Worm-church. Generally in compounds of this kind the Danish
form Kirk is a prefix, the Anglo-Saxon church an affix ; e. g.,
KirJc-bj, OS-church.

FORMS IN -BY. 251

Danes of South Britain and the Norwegians of
Scotland, the Hebrides and Ireland. It lies in
the phenomena connected with the form -by.

a. Common as they are in Denmark and Sweden,
they are almost wholly wanting in Norway.

b. Common as are other Scandinavian elements,
the forms in -by are almost wholly wanting in
Scotland and Ireland.

Hence — Northman or Scandinavian means a
Dane in South Britain, a Nomvegian in Scotland
and Ireland, and a Dane or Norwegian, as the par-
ticular case may be, in the Isle of Man, Northum-
berland, and Durham. This is well shewn, and
that for the first time, in the valuable work
referred to.

Can this analysis be carried further ? Probably
it can. Over and above the consideration of the
Frisians of Friesland,* there is that of the North-
Frisians.-f* Some of these may easily have formed
part of the Scandinavian invasion. The nearest
approach to absolute evidence on this point is
to be found in the East Riding of Yorkshire ;
where in Holdernesse we have the Frisian forms
News-om, Holl-T/m, Arr-am, and the compound
Fris-marsh. The Leicestershire Fris-% is more
evidently iVor^-Frisian.

Again, a writer who, like the present, believes
that, until a comparatively recent period, South
* See p. 240. t See p. 177, &c.

252

OLD SCRATCH.

Jutland, the Danish Isles, and the South of
Sweden, at least, were Sarmatian, is justified in
asking whether members of this stock also may
not have helped to swell the Scandinavian host.
The presumption is in favour of their having
done so; the a posteriori evidence scanty. Two
personages of our popular mythology, however,
seem Slavonic — Old Bogy and Old Scratch. Bog
in Slavonic is God, or Daemon; so that Czerne-
bog = Black God, and Biele-bog = White God;
whereas no Gothic interpretation is equally
probable.

Old Scratch is the Hairy one, or Pilosus, as
his name is rendered in the glosses. In Bohe-
mian we have the forms scret, screti, scretti, skr'et,
s'kr'jtek = demon, household god; in Polish, skrzot
and skrzitek ; in Slovenian, shkrdtie, shkrdtely.
On the other hand, in the Old High German,
the Icelandic, and some of the Low German
dialects, the word occurs as it does in English.
Still the combination of sounds is so Slavonic,
and the name is spread over so great a por-
tion of the Slavonic area, that I look upon it
as essentially and originally belonging to that
family.

The ethnological analysis of the Scandinavians
is one question ; the date of their first invasion,
another. The statements of the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle opened the present chapter. Is there

THE PICTS. 253

reason to criticize them ? For the fact of Danes
having wintered in England A.D. 787 they are
unexceptionable. For the fact of their having
never done so before, they only supply the un-
satisfactory assertion of a negative.

For my own part I should not like to deny
the presence of Scandinavians in certain parts of
Great Britain, even at the very beginning of the
Historical period. That this was the case with
Orkney and Shetland few, perhaps, are inclined
to deny. But the gloss dal*, combined the ex-
ception which can be taken to the words penn
fahel,-f gives a probability to the Scandinavian
origin of the Picts which has not hitherto been
generally admitted — the present writer, amongst
others, having denied it.

When the Britons had occupied the greater
part of the Island they were met by the Picts
from Scythia. It was not, however, on any part
of Great Britain that the Picts first landed.

It was on the north coast of Ireland, then held
by Scots. But the Scots had no room for them,
so they told them of the opposite island of
Britain, and recommended them to take posses-
sion of it ; which was done accordingly. " And
as the Picts had no wives, and had to seek them
from the Scots, they were granted on the sole
condition, that whenever the succession became
* See p. 226. t See p. 229.

254

THE PICTS.

doubtful, the female line should be preferred over
the male ; which is kept up even now amongst
the Picts." This peculiarity in the Pict law of
succession is interesting ; and as Beda speaks to
it as a cotemporary witness, it must pass as one
of the few definite facts in the Pict history. An-
other statement of true importance is, that the
Scriptures were read in all the languages of
Great Britain; there being five in number: the
Latin, the Angle, the British, the Scottish, and
the Pict

Could this Pictish have been Scandinavian, a
language closely allied to the Anglo-Saxon, with-
out Beda knowing it ? I once answered hastily
in the negative, but the fact that he actually
overlooks the Gothic character of the word dal
(= pars), has modified my view.

On the other hand, their deduction from Scythia
goes for nothing. The text which supplied Beda
with his statement has come down to us, though,
unfortunately, with three different readings. It
is from Gildas, and seems to be one of that
author's least happy attempts at fine writing.

He calls the German Ocean the Tithic Valley,
or the Valley of Tithys (Thetis ?). In one out of
the two MSS. which deviate from the form Ti-
thecam Vallem, the reading is Aticam, and in the
other Styticam. I give the texts of Gildas in full.
They may serve to shew his style : — " Itaque illis

THE PICTS. 255

ad sua remeantibus, emergunt certatim de curu-
cis, quibus sunt trans Tithecam vallem vecti,
quasi in alto Titane incalescente caumate de
aridissimis foraminuin cavernulis fusci vermicu-
lorum cenei, tetri Scotorum Pictorumque greges,
moribus ex parte dissiclentes, et una eademque
sanguinis fundendi aviditate Concordes, furcife-
rosque magis vultus pilis, quam corporum pu-
denda pudendisque proxima vestibus tegentes,
cognitaque condebitorum reversione, et reditus
denegatione, solito confidentius, omnem Aquilo-
naleni extremamque terra3 partem, pro indigenis
muro tenus capessunt." — Historia, §. 15.

But, perhaps, Gildas readily wrote Scythica ;
for there was a reason, as reasons went in the
sixth century, for his doing so. It was, probably,
the following lines in Virgil : —

" Aspice et extremis domitum cultoribus orbem,
Eoasque domos Arabum, pictosque Gelonos." — G-. xi. 115.

That either Gildas or Beda knew of the line or
translated it as if the Picts were Geloni cannot be
shewn ; but that an author uot very much later
than Beda did so is shewn by the following ex-
tract from a Life of St. Vodoal, written about the
beginning of the tenth century — "The Blessed
Vodoal was (as they say) sprung from the arrow-
bearing nation of the Geloni, who are believed to
have drawn their origin from Scythia. Concern-

256

THE PICTS.

ing whom, the poet writes Pictosque Gelonos; and
from that time till now they are called Picts."*
Sagittiferi is as Virgilian as the word Picti —

" Hie Nomadum genus et discinctos Mulciber Afros,
Hie Lelegas, Carasque sagittiferosque Gelonos
Finxerat." — Aen. viii. 725.

Another element in the reasoning upon the
date of the earliest Scandinavians is the fact that
more than one enquirer has noticed in the no-
menclature of a writer so early as Ptolemy, words
with an aspect more or less Scandinavian — e.g.,
Ar-beia, Leucopi-6i-um, Vand-uarii (Aqui-cola?),
Zose-ius fluvius ( = Salmon River), and, perhaps,
some others.

To argue that there were Scandinavians
amongst us in the second century, because cer-
tain words were Norse, and then to infer the
Norse character of the words in question from the
presence of Scandinavians is a vicious circle from
which we must keep apart. At the same time,
the insufficiency of the early historians to give a
negative, the oversight of Beda in respect to the
word dal, and the exceptions which can be taken
to the gloss penn fahel, are all elements of im-
portance. The present writer believes that there
were Norsemen in Britain anterior to A.D. 787,
and also that those Norsemen may have been
the Picts.

* From Mabillon. — Zeuss, p. 198.

THE NOEMANS. 257

The Danish and Norwegian subjects of Canute
give us a direct, the Normans of William the
Conqueror an indirect, Scandinavian element.

" The latest conquerors of this island were also
the bravest and the best. I do not except even
the Romans. And, in spite of our sympathies
with Harold and Hereward, and our abhorrence
of the founder of the New Forest and the deso-
lator of Yorkshire, we must confess the superi-
ority of the Normans to the Anglo-Saxons and
Anglo-Danes, whom they met here in 1066, as
well as to the degenerate Frank noblesse, and
the crushed and servile Romanesque provincials,
from whom, in 912, they had wrested the district
in the north of Gaul, which still bears the name
of Normandy/' *

This leads us to the analysis of the blood of
the Norman, or North-man. Occupant as he is
of a country so far south as Normandy, this is his
designation ; since the Scandinavians who in the
eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries ravaged Great
Britain, extended themselves along the coasts of
the Continent as well. And here they are sub-
ject to the same questions as the Scandinavians
of Lincolnshire, Scotland, and the Isle of Man.
They are liable to being claimed as Norwegians,
and liable to be claimed as Danes ; they may or

* The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World.— By Prof. Creasy,
— Hastings.

258 THE NORMANS.

they may not have had forerunners ; their blood,
if Danish rather than Norwegian, may have been
Jute or it may have been Frisian; they may
have been distinct from certain allied conquerors
known under the name of Saxon, or they may be
the Saxons of a previous period.

They seem, however, in reality, to have been
Norwegians from Norway rather than Danes from
Jutland and the Danish Isles ; Norwegians, un-
accompanied by females, and Norwegians who
preserve their separate nationality to a very in-
considerable extent. They formed French alli-
ances, and they adopted the habits and manners
of the natives. These were, from first to last,
Keltic on the mother's side ; but on that of the
father, Keltic, Roman, and German. That this
latter element was important, is inferred from the
names of the Ducal and Royal family: William,
Richard, Henry, &c, names as little Scandinavian
as they are Roman or Gallic.

Hence, the blood of even the true Norman was
heterogeneous ; whilst (more than this) the army
itself was only partially levied on the soil of
Normandy — Bretons, who were nearly pure Kelts,
Flemings who were Kelto - Germans, and Wal-
loons who were Kelto-German and Roman, all
helped to swell the host of the Conqueror. W^hat
these effected at Hastings, and how they appro-
priated the country, is a matter for the civil

THE NORMANS. 259

rather than the physical historian ; the distribu-
tion of their blood amongst the present English-
men being a problem for the herald and genea-
logist. The elements they brought over were
only what we had before — Keltic, Roman, Ger-
man, and Norse. The manner, however, of their
combination differed. There was also a slight
variation in the German blood. It was Frank
rather than Angle.

* * * *

Kelts, Romans, Germans, and Scandinavians,
then, supply us with the chief elements of our
population, elements which are mixed up with
each other in numerous degrees of combination ;
in so many, indeed, that in the case of the last
three there is no approach to purity.

However easy it may be, either amongst the
Gaels of Connaught, or the Cambro- Britons of
North- Wales, to find a typical and genuine Kelt,
the German, equally genuine and typical, whom
writers love to place in contrast with him, is not
to be found within the four seas, the nearest ap-
proach being the Frisian of Friesland.

It is important, too, to remember that the mix-
ture that has already taken place still goes on; and
as three pure sources of Keltic, without a corre-
sponding spring of Gothic, blood are in full flow,
the result is a slow but sure addition of Keltic
elements to the so-called Anglo-Saxon stock,

260

THE NORMANS.

elements which are perceptible in Britain, anc
which are very considerable in America. Th(
Gael or Briton who marries an English wife
transmits, on his own part, a pure Keltic straii
whereas no Englishman can effect a similar infu-
sion of Germanism — his own breed being moi
or less hybrid.

The previous pages have dealt with the retro-
spect of English ethnology. The chief questioi
in the prospect are the one just indicated and
the effects of change of area in the case of the
Americans.

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DO NOT //
REMOVE /
THE //
CARD 11
FROM ^

THIS \
POCKET X

Acme Library Card Pocket

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